Thematic Bible


Thematic Bible



"Please come, and let's reason together," implores the LORD. "Even though your sins are like scarlet, they'll be white like snow. Though they're like crimson, they'll become like wool. If you're willing and obedient, you'll eat the best that the land produces; but if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword, because the LORD has spoken."

The Israelis traveled 40 years in the wilderness until the entire nation that is, the warriors who had departed from Egypt had perished because they hadn't listened to the voice of the LORD. The LORD had promised them that he would not let them see the land that he had sworn to give us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Verse ConceptsFoodProperty, LandThe Number FortyDisobedience, To GodExclusionThe Promised Land40 To 50 YearsDeath As PunishmentMilk And Honeyconsequencesmovementwandering

"But if you don't obey the LORD your God and faithfully carry out all his commands and statutes that I'm giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you and overwhelm you: "Cursed will you be in the city and cursed will you be in the country. "Cursed will be your grain basket and your kneading bowl. read more.
"Cursed will your children be, as well as the produce of your land, the offspring of your beasts and cattle, and the offspring of your flock. "Cursed will you be in your comings and goings." "The LORD will send the curse among you, will confuse you, and will rebuke you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and perish quickly because of your evil deeds, since you will have forsaken him. The LORD will cause you to be ill with long-lasting diseases until you are wiped out from the land that you are entering to possess. The LORD will afflict you with tuberculosis, fever, inflammation, high fever, drought, blight, and mildew. These will attack you until you are completely destroyed. The sky above your head will become bronze while the ground beneath you will become iron. The LORD will change the rain on your land to powder and dust. It will come down from the sky until you are exterminated." "The LORD will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You'll go out against them in one direction, but you'll flee from them in seven directions. Consequently, you'll be in a state of great terror throughout all the kingdoms of the earth. Your dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, with no one to chase them away. "The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, skin disease, and festering rashes, and none of them will be curable. The LORD will afflict you with insanity, blindness, and mental confusion. As a result, you'll wander aimlessly in broad daylight just as a blind person wanders in darkness. You won't prosper in life. Instead, you'll be oppressed and plundered all day long, with no deliverer. "You'll be engaged to a woman, but another man will rape her. You'll build a house, but you won't live in it. You'll plant a vineyard, but you won't harvest it. Your ox will be slaughtered in front of you, and you won't be able to eat it. Your donkey will be stolen from you while you watch and won't be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be handed to your enemies, and there will be no deliverer. Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you watch. You won't be able to approach them at all, and you'll be powerless to help. "A people whom you don't know will devour what your land and labor produces. You'll be only oppressed and discouraged continuously until you are driven insane from what your eyes will see. "The LORD will afflict you with incurable boils on your knees and legs, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. "The LORD will banish you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you'll serve other gods of wood and stone. You'll become a desolation and a proverb, and you'll be mocked among the people where the LORD will drive you." "You'll plant many seeds in a field, but your harvest will be small because the locust will consume it. You'll plant a vineyard, but you won't drink wine or harvest any grapes because worms will consume it. You'll have olive trees throughout your territory, but you won't be able to anoint yourself with oil because the olives will drop off the trees. You'll bear sons and daughters, but they won't belong to you because they'll go into captivity. Whirling locusts will consume every tree and the produce of your land. The foreigner in your midst will be elevated higher and higher over you, while you are brought low little by little. He will lend to you, but you won't lend to him. He'll be the head, but you'll be the tail. All these curses will come upon you and will overwhelm you until you are exterminated, because you didn't obey the LORD your God to keep his commands and statutes, which he had commanded you. These curses will serve as a sign and wonder for you and your descendants as long as you live." "Because you didn't serve the LORD your God joyfully and wholeheartedly, despite the abundance of everything you have, you'll serve your enemies whom the LORD your God will send against you. You will serve in famine and in drought, in nakedness, and in lack of everything. They'll set a yoke of iron upon your neck until they have exterminated you. "The LORD will raise a distant nation against you from the other side of the earth. Swooping down like a vulture, it will be a nation whose language you don't understand, whose stern appearance neither shows regard nor extends grace to anyone whether old or young. Its army will consume the offspring of your animals and the produce of your soil until you are exterminated. They will leave you without your grain, wine, oil, the increase of your cattle, and the lamb of your flock, until you are completely destroyed. They'll besiege all your cities until your high and fortified walls in which you have trusted collapse throughout the land. Indeed, they will besiege all your cities, which the LORD your God gave you." "You'll eat your own children the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God gave you on account of the siege and the distress with which your enemy will oppress you. Even the compassionate man among you the very sensitive one will look with evil in his eyes toward his brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving sons, whom he spared. He will withhold from each of them the flesh of his sons that he is eating since there will be nothing left on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in all your cities. The most tender and sensitive lady among you, who doesn't venture to touch the soles of her feet to the ground on account of her daintiness, will look with hostility in her eyes against her beloved husband, her sons, and her daughters. She will eat her afterbirth and her newborn children secretly since there will be nothing left on account of the siege and distress with which your enemy will oppress you in your cities." "If you aren't careful to observe all the words of this Law that have been written in this book, instructing you to fear this glorious and awesome name of the LORD your God, then he will inflict extraordinary plagues on you and your children great and lasting plagues and severe and lasting illnesses. He will inflict on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they won't be curable. Moreover, the LORD will inflict you with illnesses and plagues that were not written in this Book of the Law, until you are exterminated. Because you will not have obeyed the LORD your God, very few of you will be left instead of you being as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Just as the LORD delighted to prosper and increase you, so now the LORD will delight to destroy, exterminate, and banish you from the land that you are about to enter to possess." "He'll scatter you among the nations from one end of the earth to the other, and there you'll serve other gods made of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you'll have no rest. There'll be no resting place for the soles of your feet. Instead, the LORD will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a despairing spirit. You'll cling to life, being fearful by both night and day, with no assurance of survival. In the morning you'll say, "I wish it were evening.' Yet in the evening you'll say, "I wish it were morning,' on account of what you'll dread and what you'll see. Finally, the LORD will bring you back to Egypt by ship, a place that I said you'd never see again. There you'll try to sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you."

or a curse if you don't obey the commands of the LORD your God, by turning from the way that I'm commanding you today and following other gods whom you have not known." Verse ConceptsGod's WaysDisobedience, To GodUnknown GodsThe Curse Of The LawDifferent GodsPenalties For Serving Other GodsObeying Goddisobediencecursesobeying

but if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword, because the LORD has spoken." Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

"Go now, and write it down on a tablet in their presence, inscribing it in a book, so that for times to come it may be an everlasting witness. For they are a rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to hear the LORD's instruction. They say to the seers, "Don't see visions,' and to the prophets, "Don't give us visions of what is right! Instead, tell us welcome things, prophesy illusions, read more.
get out of the way, turn aside from the path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel." Therefore, this is what the Holy One of Israel says: "Because you reject this message, and put your trust in oppression and enjoy it, and since you rely on it, therefore, for you this sin will become like a breach in a high wall that is about to collapse, bulging out, and whose crash comes suddenly in an instant. Its breaking will be like when potters' vessels are broken, shattered so ruthlessly that among its fragments not even a broken sliver will be found for taking fire from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern." For this is what the LORD GOD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest you will be saved; in staying calm and trusting will be your strength. But you refused. Instead, you said, "No! We'll escape on horses!' Therefore, you'll flee away. And you said, "We'll ride off on swift steeds!' Therefore your pursuers will be swift. A thousand will flee at the threat of one; and run away, pursued by five, until you are left like a flagpole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill."

But if you don't obey the LORD and rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the LORD will turn against you as he did against your ancestors. Verse ConceptsThreatsDisobedience, To GodGod Opposing

but if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword, because the LORD has spoken." Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

Therefore, this is what the LORD says: "I'm about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you will die because you have preached rebellion against the LORD.'" So the prophet Hananiah died in the seventh month of that year.

"Then they disobeyed, rebelled against you, and threw your Law behind their backs. They murdered your prophets who had admonished the people to return to you, committing terrible blasphemies. So you delivered them into the control of their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed, they cried out to you, and you heard from heaven. In your great compassion you gave them deliverers who rescued them from the control of their enemies. "But after they had gained relief, they returned to doing evil before you. Therefore you abandoned them to the control of their enemies, who continued to oppress them. But when they came back and cried out to you, you listened from heaven and delivered them in your compassion on many occasions. read more.
You admonished them to return to your Law, but they acted arrogantly, and would not listen to your commands. They sinned against your regulations, which if anyone obeys, he will live by them. They turned away, being stubborn and stiff-necked, and they did not listen. You were patient with them for many years, warning them by your Spirit through your prophets. But they would not listen, so you turned them over to the control of people in other lands. Nevertheless, in your great compassion you did not completely destroy them or abandon them, because you are a God of grace and you are merciful.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for his gracious love and his awesome deeds for mankind. He has satisfied the one who thirsts, filling the hungry with what is good. Some sat in deepest darkness, shackled with cruel iron, read more.
because they had rebelled against the command of God, despising the advice of the Most High. He humbled them through suffering, as they stumbled without a helper.

I prayed to the LORD my God, confessing and saying: "Lord! Great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant and gracious love for those who love him and obey his commandments, we've sinned, we've practiced evil, we've acted wickedly, and we've rebelled, turning away from your commands and from your regulations. Furthermore, we haven't listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, to our officials, to our ancestors, and to all of the people of the land. read more.
"To you, Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us, open humiliation even to this day, to the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, both those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the lands to which you drove them because of their unfaithful acts that they committed against you. "Open humiliation belongs to us, LORD, to our kings, our officials, and our ancestors, because we've sinned against you. But to the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we've rebelled against him

But if you don't obey the LORD and rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the LORD will turn against you as he did against your ancestors. Verse ConceptsThreatsDisobedience, To GodGod Opposing

"But they rebelled against me and weren't willing to obey me. None of them abandoned their detestable practices or their Egyptian idols. So I said, "I'll pour out my anger on them, extending my fury in the middle of the land of Egypt.' Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelSin, And God's CharacterRebellion Against God, Shown InSending Things AwayEvil EyesIdol WorshipRebellion against God

"But if you won't listen to me and obey all these commands, and if you refuse my statutes, loathe my ordinances, and fail to carry out all of my commands, thereby breaching my covenant, then I will certainly do this to you: I'll appoint sudden terror to infect you like tuberculosis and fever. Your eyes will fail and your life will waste away. You'll plant in vain, because your enemies will consume what you plant. read more.
I'll set my face against you so that you'll be defeated before your enemies. Those who hate you will have dominion over you and you'll keep fleeing even when no one is pursuing you. "If, despite all of this, you still don't listen to me, then I'll punish you seven times more on account of your sins. I'll break your mighty pride. I'll make the heavens to be like iron and the ground like bronze. Your strength will be spent in vain, because your land won't yield its produce and the trees of the land won't yield their fruit. "If you live life contrary to me and remain unwilling to listen to me, then I'll add to your wounds seven times more on account of your sins. I'll send wild beasts against you from the open country to deprive you of your children, destroy your cattle, and decrease your number so that your roads become desolate. "If, despite these things, you still won't return to me, but live life contrary to me, then I'll certainly oppose you. I'll take vengeance against you seven fold on account of your sins. I'll bring the sword against you to execute the vengeance of my covenant. When you gather in your cities, I'll send a pestilence. As a result, you'll be delivered into the control of your enemies. When I destroy the source of your bread, ten women will bake bread in one oven. Then they'll return back your bread by weight. You'll eat but won't be satisfied. "If, after all of this time, you don't listen to me, but instead live life contrary to me, I'll oppose you with vicious rage. Indeed, I myself will punish you seven fold on account of your sins. At that time, you'll eat the flesh of your sons and you'll eat the flesh of your daughters. I'll destroy your high places and cut down your sun pillars. Then I'll cast your dead bodies on top of the bodies of your idols. I'll loathe you. I'll lay your cities to waste and destroy your sanctuaries so I don't have to smell the scent of your soothing odors. I'll make the land so desolate that your enemies who live in it will be astonished." "I'll scatter you among the nations and draw the sword after you so that your land becomes desolate and your towns become ruins. Then the land will finally be pleased with its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time, the land will rest and take its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate, it will have rest that it will not have had during your Sabbaths when you were living in it. "As for the remnants among you, I'll bring despair in their hearts in the land of their enemies so that even the sound of a blown leaf will chase them and they flee as though pursued by the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. They'll stumble over each other as though fleeing before the sword, even though no one is pursuing. "You won't have power to resist your enemies. You'll perish among the nations and the land of your enemies will consume you. The remnants among you will waste away in the land of your enemies due to their iniquity. Indeed, they'll also waste away on account of the iniquities of their ancestors with them."

but if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword, because the LORD has spoken." Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

"Tell the nations, "Here they come!' Proclaim to Jerusalem, "The besieging forces are coming from a distant land. They cry out against the cities of Judah. They have surrounded her like those guarding a field because they have rebelled against me,'" declares the LORD. "Your lifestyles and your actions have brought these things on you. This is your calamity it is indeed bitter, for it has reached your heart!"

I'll eliminate the rebels among you, along with those who are transgressing against me. I'll bring them out of the land where you've lived, but they won't be able to enter the land of Israel. Then you'll know that I am the LORD." Verse ConceptsKnowledge, Of GodPurgingEntering The KingdomBeing Cleansed From Sin

He told the king, "This is what the LORD says: "Because you let the man whom I had dedicated to destruction go free, therefore your life is to be forfeited for his life, and your people for his people.'" Verse ConceptsProphets, Role OfSubstitutionPredestination, Of PersonsAnnihilationEquality Of PunishmentPeople Set Free By People

Recount the brief! Let's argue the matter together; Present your case, so that you may be proved right. Verse ConceptsLogicReasoningSuing GodThe Pastremembrancepastvindication

Perhaps the house of Judah will hear about all the calamity that I'm planning to bring on them, and so each of them will turn from his wicked way and I'll forgive their iniquities and sins." Verse ConceptsAssurance, nature ofPlansGod Will Bring HarmGod Will Forgive

"Please come, and let's reason together," implores the LORD. "Even though your sins are like scarlet, they'll be white like snow. Though they're like crimson, they'll become like wool. If you're willing and obedient, you'll eat the best that the land produces; but if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword, because the LORD has spoken."


If only they would commit to fear me and keep all my commands, then it will go well with them and their children forever. Verse ConceptsFear Of The LordPenitentReceptive HeartsFear God!Keep The Commandments!

Perhaps their pleas for help will come to the LORD's attention, and each of them will turn from his evil lifestyle in light of the great anger and wrath that the LORD has declared against this people." Verse ConceptsPrayer, Described AsGod Answers PrayerFree Moral AgencyAnger And Forgivenesssupplicationpetition

When Cain became very upset and depressed, the LORD asked Cain, "Why are you so upset? Why are you depressed? If you do what is appropriate, you'll be accepted, won't you? But if you don't do what is appropriate, sin is crouching near your doorway, turning toward you. Now as for you, will you take dominion over it?" Instead, Cain told his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the wilderness." When they were outside in the fields, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. read more.
Later, the LORD asked Cain, "Where's your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he answered. "Am I my brother's guardian?" "What did you do?" God asked. "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.