For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there will be five more years without plowing or harvesting.

If your gift is a grain offering prepared in a pan, it must be made of fine flour with oil.

“When you have children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, and if you act corruptly, make an idol in the form of anything, and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, provoking Him to anger,

When the ark of the Lord had been in the land of the Philistines for seven months,

Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon. They have gone from there rejoicing. The town has been in an uproar; that’s the noise you heard.

She treats her young harshly, as if they were not her own,
with no fear that her labor may have been in vain.

For I am about to fall,
and my pain is constantly with me.

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Be ashamed Sidon, the stronghold of the sea,
for the sea has spoken:
“I have not been in labor or given birth.
I have not raised young men
or brought up young women.”

“Rejoice, childless one, who did not give birth;
burst into song and shout,
you who have not been in labor!
For the children of the forsaken one will be more
than the children of the married woman,”
says the Lord.

My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in agony!
Oh, the pain in my heart!
My heart pounds;
I cannot be silent.
For you, my soul,
have heard the sound of the ram’s horn—
the shout of battle.

‘You have said, “Woe is me, because the Lord has added misery to my pain! I am worn out with groaning and have found no rest.”’