For this is what the sovereign master ¹  has told me: “Within exactly one year ²  all the splendor of Kedar will come to an end.

So this is what the Lord, the one who delivered Abraham, says to the family of Jacob: ¹  “Jacob will no longer be ashamed; their faces will no longer show their embarrassment. ² 

The land ¹  dries up ²  and withers away; the forest of Lebanon shrivels up ³  and decays. Sharon ⁴  is like the desert; ⁵  Bashan and Carmel ⁶  are parched. ⁷ 

Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales. He lifts ¹  the coastlands ²  as if they were dust.

The people cry out, ¹  “We have heard reports about them! We have become helpless with fear! ²  Anguish grips us, agony like that of a woman giving birth to a baby!

Fathers will hear the hoofbeats of the enemies’ horses, the clatter of their chariots and the rumbling of their wheels. They will not turn back to save their children because they will be paralyzed with fear. ¹ 

Their tents and their flocks will be taken away. Their tent curtains, equipment, and camels will be carried off. People will shout ¹  to them, ‘Terror is all around you!’” ² 

ח (Khet) Now their appearance ¹  is darker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up, like tree bark.

wearing belts on their waists and flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers, the image of Babylonians ¹  whose native land is Chaldea.

What the king is asking is too difficult, and no one exists who can disclose it to the king, except for the gods – but they don’t live among mortals!” ¹ 

Even if you were to soar high like an eagle, ¹  even if you ²  were to make your nest among the stars, I can bring you down even from there!” says the Lord.

“Exert every effort ¹  to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.

It would be better for him to have a millstone ¹  tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea ²  than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. ³ 

While the man ¹  was hanging on to Peter and John, all the people, completely astounded, ran together to them in the covered walkway ²  called Solomon’s Portico. ³ 

(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there used to spend their time ¹  in nothing else than telling ²  or listening to something new.) ³ 

So you too consider yourselves ¹  dead to sin, but ²  alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their ¹  condemnation pronounced long ago ²  is not sitting idly by; ³  their ⁴  destruction is not asleep.

Then Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and Ithamar his other two sons, “Do not ¹  dishevel the hair of your heads ²  and do not tear your garments, so that you do not die and so that wrath does not come on the whole congregation. Your brothers, all the house of Israel, are to mourn the burning which the Lord has caused, ³ 

For I will drive out ¹  the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one will covet ²  your land when you go up ³  to appear before the Lord your God three times ⁴  in the year.

But don’t you delay! Chase your enemies and catch them! ¹  Don’t allow them to retreat to ²  their cities, for the Lord your God is handing them over to you.” ³