For how do you know, wife, whether you will bring your husband to salvation? ¹  Or how do you know, husband, whether you will bring your wife to salvation? ² 

Now a wife of one of the prophets ¹  appealed ²  to Elisha for help, saying, “Your servant, my husband is dead. You know that your servant was a loyal follower of the Lord. ³  Now the creditor is coming to take away my two boys to be his servants.”

I am as full of anger as you are, Lord, ¹  I am tired of trying to hold it in.” The Lord answered, ²  “Vent it, then, ³  on the children who play in the street and on the young men who are gathered together. Husbands and wives are to be included, ⁴  as well as the old and those who are advanced in years.

You must not have sexual intercourse with your father’s wife; she is your father’s nakedness. ¹ 

When David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul’s concubine, had done,

These were all the sons of David, not counting the sons of his concubines. ¹  Tamar was their sister.

“We will not give our daughters in marriage to the neighboring peoples, and we will not take their daughters in marriage for our sons.

Those who survive him are buried by the plague, ¹  and their ²  widows do not mourn for them.

They have sex with their father’s wife within you; ¹  they violate women during their menstrual period within you. ² 

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels ¹  in heaven.

But those who are regarded as worthy to share in ¹  that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ² 

They came from nations about which the Lord had warned the Israelites, “You must not establish friendly relations with them! ¹  If you do, they will surely shift your allegiance to their gods.” ²  But Solomon was irresistibly attracted to them. ³ 

And this very day the noble ladies of Persia and Media who have heard the matter concerning the queen will respond in the same way to all the royal officials, and there will be more than enough contempt and anger!

They sacrifice on the mountaintops, and burn offerings on the hills; they sacrifice ¹  under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is so pleasant. As a result, your daughters have become cult prostitutes, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery!

You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears ¹  as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you.

But all the evil and worthless men among those who had gone with David said, “Since they didn’t go with us, ¹  we won’t give them any of the loot we retrieved! They may take only their wives and children. Let them lead them away and be gone!”

So I entered a complaint with them. I called down a curse on them, and I struck some of the men and pulled out their hair. I had them swear by God saying, “You will not marry off ¹  your daughters to their sons, and you will not take any of their daughters as wives for your sons or for yourselves!

Was it not because of things like these that King Solomon of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made ¹  him king over all Israel. But the foreign wives made even him sin!

In the evening she went, and in the morning she returned to a separate part ¹  of the harem, to the authority of Shaashgaz the king’s eunuch who was overseeing the concubines. She would not go back to the king unless the king was pleased with her ²  and she was requested by name.

Rescue me, ¹  I pray, from the hand ²  of my brother Esau, ³  for I am afraid he will come ⁴  and attack me, as well as the mothers with their children. ⁵