When they came to the threshing floor of Atad ¹  on the other side of the Jordan, they mourned there with very great and bitter sorrow. ²  There Joseph observed a seven day period of mourning for his father.

Moses summoned ¹  Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person in whom ²  the Lord had put skill – everyone whose heart stirred him ³  to volunteer ⁴  to do the work,

If a daughter of a priest profanes herself by engaging in prostitution, she is profaning her father. She must be burned to death. ¹ 

so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship ¹  their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God.

Then Joab blew the ram’s horn and all the people stopped in their tracks. ¹  They stopped chasing Israel and ceased fighting. ² 

David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth son of Saul with this demand: ¹  “Give me my wife Michal whom I acquired ²  for a hundred Philistine foreskins.”

There were also male cultic prostitutes ¹  in the land. They committed the same horrible sins as the nations ²  that the Lord had driven out from before the Israelites.

Have them hand it over to the construction foremen ¹  assigned to the Lord’s temple. They in turn should pay the temple workers to repair it, ² 

The musicians and Levite family leaders stayed in rooms at the sanctuary ¹  and were exempt from other duties, for day and night they had to carry out their assigned tasks.

I sent word back to him, “We are not engaged in these activities you are describing. ¹  All of this is a figment of your imagination.” ² 

Should we then in your case hear that you do all this great evil, thereby being unfaithful to our God by marrying ¹  foreign wives?”

You took some of your clothing and made for yourself decorated high places; you engaged in prostitution on them. You went to him to become his. ¹ 

does not engage in usury or charge interest, ¹  but refrains ²  from wrongdoing, promotes true justice ³  between men,

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Will you defile yourselves like your fathers ¹  and engage in prostitution with detestable idols?

Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt.

I will do these things to you ¹  because you engaged in prostitution with the nations, polluting yourself with their idols.

The merchants of Sheba and Raamah engaged in trade with you; they traded the best kinds of spices along with precious stones and gold for your products.

You rely ¹  on your swords and commit abominable deeds; each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife. Will you possess the land?’

“Then the king of the south ¹  will be enraged and will march out to fight against the king of the north, who will also muster a large army, but that army will be delivered into his hand.

I know Ephraim all too well; ¹  the evil of ²  Israel is not hidden from me. For you have engaged in prostitution, O Ephraim; Israel has defiled itself. ³