“Son of man, because Tyre said about Jerusalem, ‘Good! The gateway to the peoples is shattered. She has been turned over to me. I will be filled now that she lies in ruins,’

She will become a place in the sea to spread nets, for I have spoken.” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “She will become plunder for the nations,

Then they will lament for you and say of you:

How you have perished, city of renown,
you who were populated from the seas!
She who was powerful on the sea,
she and all of her inhabitants
inflicted their terror.

Therefore say to them: This is what the Lord God says: You eat meat with blood in it, raise your eyes to your idols, and shed blood. Should you then receive possession of the land?

So I poured out My wrath on them because of the blood they had shed on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols.

Because of the outcry of the king and his nobles, the queen came to the banquet hall. “May the king live forever,” she said. “Don’t let your thoughts terrify you or your face be pale.

After some years they will form an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the South will go to the king of the North to seal the agreement. She will not retain power, and his strength will not endure. She will be given up, together with her entourage, her father, and the one who supported her during those times.

He will resolve to come with the force of his whole kingdom and will reach an agreement with him. He will give him a daughter in marriage to destroy it, but she will not stand with him or support him.

So he went and married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and the Lord said to him:

Name her No Compassion,
for I will no longer have compassion
on the house of Israel.
I will certainly take them away.

After Gomer had weaned No Compassion, she conceived and gave birth to a son.

Rebuke your mother; rebuke her.
For she is not My wife and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face
and her adultery from between her breasts.

Otherwise, I will strip her naked
and expose her as she was on the day of her birth.
I will make her like a desert
and like a parched land,
and I will let her die of thirst.

Yes, their mother is promiscuous;
she conceived them and acted shamefully.
For she thought, “I will go after my lovers,
the men who give me my food and water,
my wool and flax, my oil and drink.”

Therefore, this is what I will do:
I will block her way with thorns;
I will enclose her with a wall,
so that she cannot find her paths.

She will pursue her lovers but not catch them;
she will seek them but not find them.
Then she will think,
“I will go back to my former husband,
for then it was better for me than now.”

She does not recognize
that it is I who gave her the grain,
the new wine, and the oil.
I lavished silver and gold on her,
which they used for Baal.

I will devastate her vines and fig trees.
She thinks that these are her wages
that her lovers have given her.
I will turn them into a thicket,
and the wild animals will eat them.

And I will punish her for the days of the Baals
when she burned incense to them,
put on her rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but forgot Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

There I will give her vineyards back to her
and make the Valley of Achor
into a gateway of hope.
There she will respond as she did
in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.

Samaria will bear her guilt
because she has rebelled against her God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to pieces,
and their pregnant women ripped open.

Egypt will become desolate,
and Edom a desert wasteland,
because of the violence done to the people of Judah
in whose land they shed innocent blood.

She has fallen;
Virgin Israel will never rise again.
She lies abandoned on her land,
with no one to raise her up.

All her carved images will be smashed to pieces;
all her wages will be burned in the fire,
and I will destroy all her idols.
Since she collected the wages of a prostitute,
they will be used again for a prostitute.

Therefore, He will abandon them until the time
when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of His brothers will return
to the people of Israel.

Godly people have vanished from the land;
there is no one upright among the people.
All of them wait in ambush to shed blood;
they hunt each other with a net.

Then my enemy will see,
and she will be covered with shame,
the one who said to me,
“Where is the Lord your God?”
My eyes will look at her in triumph;
at that time she will be trampled
like mud in the streets.

Beauty is stripped,
she is carried away;
her ladies-in-waiting moan
like the sound of doves,
and beat their breasts.

Yet she became an exile;
she went into captivity.
Her children were also dashed to pieces
at the head of every street.
They cast lots for her dignitaries,
and all her nobles were bound in chains.

This is the self-assured city
that lives in security,
that thinks to herself:
I exist, and there is no one else.
What a desolation she has become,
a place for wild animals to lie down!
Everyone who passes by her
jeers and shakes his fist.

She has not obeyed;
she has not accepted discipline.
She has not trusted in Yahweh;
she has not drawn near to her God.

Tyre has built herself a fortress;
she has heaped up silver like dust
and gold like the dirt of the streets.

Listen! The Lord will impoverish her
and cast her wealth into the sea;
she herself will be consumed by fire.

Yet you ask, “For what reason?” Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have acted treacherously against her, though she was your marriage partner and your wife by covenant.

The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way: After His mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.”

but did not know her intimately until she gave birth to a son. And he named Him Jesus.

A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
and she refused to be consoled,
because they were no more.

So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. Then she got up and began to serve Him.

As He was telling them these things, suddenly one of the leaders came and knelt down before Him, saying, “My daughter is near death, but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.”

for she said to herself, “If I can just touch His robe, I’ll be made well!”

The queen of the south will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and look—something greater than Solomon is here!

So he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask.

And prompted by her mother, she answered, “Give me John the Baptist’s head here on a platter!”

Yet He did not say a word to her. So His disciples approached Him and urged Him, “Send her away because she cries out after us.”

But she came, knelt before Him, and said, “Lord, help me!”

“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table!”

Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons approached Him with her sons. She knelt down to ask Him for something.

“What do you want?” He asked her.

“Promise,” she said to Him, “that these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right and the other on Your left, in Your kingdom.”

In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had married her.”

So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days:

The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not shed its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the celestial powers will be shaken.

a woman approached Him with an alabaster jar of very expensive fragrant oil. She poured it on His head as He was reclining at the table.

But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a noble thing for Me.

By pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she has prepared Me for burial.

For this is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant approached him and she said, “You were with Jesus the Galilean too.”

So He went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she began to serve them.

and kept begging Him, “My little daughter is at death’s door. Come and lay Your hands on her so she can get well and live.”

had endured much under many doctors. She had spent everything she had and was not helped at all. On the contrary, she became worse.

Having heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His robe.

For she said, “If I can just touch His robes, I’ll be made well!”

Instantly her flow of blood ceased, and she sensed in her body that she was cured of her affliction.

Immediately the girl got up and began to walk. (She was 12 years old.) At this they were utterly astounded.

Then He gave them strict orders that no one should know about this and said that she should be given something to eat.

So Herodias held a grudge against him and wanted to kill him. But she could not,

When Herodias’s own daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

Then she went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?”

“John the Baptist’s head!” she said.

Immediately she hurried to the king and said, “I want you to give me John the Baptist’s head on a platter—right now!”

Now the woman was Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

But she replied to Him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

When she went back to her home, she found her child lying on the bed, and the demon was gone.

Also, if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be, since the seven had married her?”

For they all gave out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she possessed—all she had to live on.”

“But in those days, after that tribulation:

The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not shed its light;

While He was in Bethany at the house of Simon who had a serious skin disease, as He was reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of pure and expensive fragrant oil of nard. She broke the jar and poured it on His head.

Then Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for Me.

She has done what she could; she has anointed My body in advance for burial.

He said to them, “This is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many.

When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus.”

When the servant saw him again she began to tell those standing nearby, “This man is one of them!”

She went and reported to those who had been with Him, as they were mourning and weeping.

After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived and kept herself in seclusion for five months. She said,

But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be.

And consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless.

where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth.

Then she exclaimed with a loud cry:

“You are the most blessed of women,
and your child will be blessed!

She who has believed is blessed because what was spoken to her by the Lord will be fulfilled!”

And Mary stayed with her about three months; then she returned to her home.

Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth, and she had a son.

Then she gave birth to her firstborn Son, and she wrapped Him snugly in cloth and laid Him in a feeding trough—because there was no room for them at the lodging place.

There was also a prophetess, Anna, a daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was well along in years, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,

and was a widow for 84 years. She did not leave the temple complex, serving God night and day with fasting and prayers.

At that very moment, she came up and began to thank God and to speak about Him to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad,
son of Shem, son of Noah,
son of Lamech,

So He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and began to serve them.

Just as He neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was also with her.

And a woman in the town who was a sinner found out that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house. She brought an alabaster jar of fragrant oil

and stood behind Him at His feet, weeping, and began to wash His feet with her tears. She wiped His feet with the hair of her head, kissing them and anointing them with the fragrant oil.