Thematic Bible


Thematic Bible



Come, let's consider your options," says the Lord. "Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become white like wool. If you have a willing attitude and obey, then you will again eat the good crops of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." Know for certain that the Lord has spoken.

Indeed, for forty years the Israelites traveled through the desert until all the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt, the ones who had disobeyed the Lord, died off. For the Lord had sworn a solemn oath to them that he would not let them see the land he had sworn on oath to give them, a land rich in milk and honey. Verse ConceptsFoodProperty, LandThe Number FortyDisobedience, To GodExclusionThe Promised Land40 To 50 YearsDeath As PunishmentMilk And Honeyconsequencesmovementwandering

"But if you ignore the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the field. Your basket and your mixing bowl will be cursed. read more.
Your children will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. "The Lord will send on you a curse, confusing you and opposing you in everything you undertake until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the evil of your deeds, in that you have forsaken me. The Lord will plague you with deadly diseases until he has completely removed you from the land you are about to possess. He will afflict you with weakness, fever, inflammation, infection, sword, blight, and mildew; these will attack you until you perish. The sky above your heads will be bronze and the earth beneath you iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; it will come down on you from the sky until you are destroyed. "The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses will be food for every bird of the sky and wild animal of the earth, and there will be no one to chase them off. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, eczema, and scabies, all of which cannot be healed. The Lord will also subject you to madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. You will feel your way along at noon like the blind person does in darkness and you will not succeed in anything you do; you will be constantly oppressed and continually robbed, with no one to save you. You will be engaged to a woman and another man will rape her. You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it. Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it. Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you. Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you. Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while you look on in vain all day, and you will be powerless to do anything about it. As for the produce of your land and all your labor, a people you do not know will consume it, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed for the rest of your lives. You will go insane from seeing all this. The Lord will afflict you in your knees and on your legs with painful, incurable boils -- from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. The Lord will force you and your king whom you will appoint over you to go away to a people whom you and your ancestors have not known, and you will serve other gods of wood and stone there. You will become an occasion of horror, a proverb, and an object of ridicule to all the peoples to whom the Lord will drive you. "You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them, but you will not drink wine or gather in grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with olive oil, because the olives will drop off the trees while still unripe. You will bear sons and daughters but not keep them, because they will be taken into captivity. Whirring locusts will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil. The foreigners who reside among you will become higher and higher over you and you will become lower and lower. They will lend to you but you will not lend to them; they will become the head and you will become the tail! All these curses will fall on you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes that he has given you. These curses will be a perpetual sign and wonder with reference to you and your descendants. "Because you have not served the Lord your God joyfully and wholeheartedly with the abundance of everything you have, instead in hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. They will place an iron yoke on your neck until they have destroyed you. The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you, one from the other side of the earth as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young. They will devour the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your soil until you are destroyed. They will not leave you with any grain, new wine, olive oil, calves of your herds, or lambs of your flocks until they have destroyed you. They will besiege all of your villages until all of your high and fortified walls collapse -- those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you. The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. "If you refuse to obey all the words of this law, the things written in this scroll, and refuse to fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will increase your punishments and those of your descendants -- great and long-lasting afflictions and severe, enduring illnesses. He will infect you with all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will persistently afflict you. Moreover, the Lord will bring upon you every kind of sickness and plague not mentioned in this scroll of commandments, until you have perished. There will be very few of you left, though at one time you were as numerous as the stars in the sky, because you will have disobeyed the Lord your God. This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess. The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone. Among those nations you will have no rest nor will there be a place of peaceful rest for the soles of your feet, for there the Lord will give you an anxious heart, failing eyesight, and a spirit of despair. Your life will hang in doubt before you; you will be terrified by night and day and will have no certainty of surviving from one day to the next. In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening!' And in the evening you will say, 'I wish it were morning!' because of the things you will fear and the things you will see. Then the Lord will make you return to Egypt by ship, over a route I said to you that you would never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you."

and the curse if you pay no attention to his commandments and turn from the way I am setting before you today to pursue other gods 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 will be devoured by the sword." Know for certain that the Lord has spoken. Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

Now go, write it down on a tablet in their presence, inscribe it on a scroll, so that it might be preserved for a future time as an enduring witness. For these are rebellious people -- they are lying children, children unwilling to obey the Lord's law. They say to the visionaries, "See no more visions!" and to the seers, "Don't relate messages to us about what is right! Tell us nice things, relate deceptive messages. read more.
Turn aside from the way, stray off the path. Remove from our presence the Holy One of Israel." For this reason this is what the Holy One of Israel says: "You have rejected this message; you trust instead in your ability to oppress and trick, and rely on that kind of behavior. So this sin will become your downfall. You will be like a high wall that bulges and cracks and is ready to collapse; it crumbles suddenly, in a flash. It shatters in pieces like a clay jar, so shattered to bits that none of it can be salvaged. Among its fragments one cannot find a shard large enough to scoop a hot coal from a fire or to skim off water from a cistern." For this is what the master, the Lord, the Holy One of Israel says: "If you repented and patiently waited for me, you would be delivered; if you calmly trusted in me you would find strength, but you are unwilling. You say, 'No, we will flee on horses,' so you will indeed flee. You say, 'We will ride on fast horses,' so your pursuers will be fast. One thousand will scurry at the battle cry of one enemy soldier; at the battle cry of five enemy soldiers you will all run away, until the remaining few are as isolated as a flagpole on a mountaintop or a signal flag on a hill."

But if you don't obey the Lord and rebel against what the Lord says, the hand of the Lord will be against both you and your king. Verse ConceptsThreatsDisobedience, To GodGod Opposing

But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." Know for certain that the Lord has spoken. Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

So the Lord says, 'I will most assuredly remove you from the face of the earth. You will die this very year because you have counseled rebellion against the Lord.'" In the seventh month of that very same year the prophet Hananiah died.

"Nonetheless they grew disobedient and rebelled against you; they disregarded your law. They killed your prophets who had solemnly admonished them in order to cause them to return to you. They committed atrocious blasphemies. Therefore you delivered them into the hand of their adversaries, who oppressed them. But in the time of their distress they called to you, and you heard from heaven. In your abundant compassion you provided them with deliverers to rescue them from their adversaries. "Then, when they were at rest again, they went back to doing evil before you. Then you abandoned them to their enemies, and they gained dominion over them. When they again cried out to you, in your compassion you heard from heaven and rescued them time and again. read more.
And you solemnly admonished them in order to return them to your law, but they behaved presumptuously and did not obey your commandments. They sinned against your ordinances -- those by which an individual, if he obeys them, will live. They boldly turned from you; they rebelled and did not obey. You prolonged your kindness with them for many years, and you solemnly admonished them by your Spirit through your prophets. Still they paid no attention, so you delivered them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. However, due to your abundant mercy you did not do away with them altogether; you did not abandon them. For you are a merciful and compassionate God.

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his loyal love, and for the amazing things he has done for people! For he has satisfied those who thirst, and those who hunger he has filled with food. They sat in utter darkness, bound in painful iron chains, read more.
because they had rebelled against God's commands, and rejected the instructions of the sovereign king. So he used suffering to humble them; they stumbled and no one helped them up.

I prayed to the LORD my God, confessing in this way: "O Lord, great and awesome God who is faithful to his covenant with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned! We have done what is wrong and wicked; we have rebelled by turning away from your commandments and standards. We have not paid attention to your servants the prophets, who spoke by your authority to our kings, our leaders, and our ancestors, and to all the inhabitants of the land as well. read more.
"You are righteous, O Lord, but we are humiliated this day -- the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far away in all the countries in which you have scattered them, because they have behaved unfaithfully toward you. O LORD, we have been humiliated -- our kings, our leaders, and our ancestors -- because we have sinned against you. Yet the Lord our God is compassionate and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him.

But if you don't obey the Lord and rebel against what the Lord says, the hand of the Lord will be against both you and your king. Verse ConceptsThreatsDisobedience, To GodGod Opposing

But they rebelled against me, and refused to listen to me; no one got rid of their detestable idols, nor did they abandon the idols of Egypt. Then I decided to pour out my rage on them and fully vent my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelSin, And God's CharacterRebellion Against God, Shown InSending Things AwayEvil EyesIdol WorshipRebellion against God

"'If, however, you do not obey me and keep all these commandments -- if you reject my statutes and abhor my regulations so that you do not keep all my commandments and you break my covenant -- I for my part will do this to you: I will inflict horror on you, consumption and fever, which diminish eyesight and drain away the vitality of life. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. read more.
I will set my face against you. You will be struck down before your enemies, those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when there is no one pursuing you. "'If, in spite of all these things, you do not obey me, I will discipline you seven times more on account of your sins. I will break your strong pride and make your sky like iron and your land like bronze. Your strength will be used up in vain, your land will not give its yield, and the trees of the land will not produce their fruit. "'If you walk in hostility against me and are not willing to obey me, I will increase your affliction seven times according to your sins. I will send the wild animals against you and they will bereave you of your children, annihilate your cattle, and diminish your population so that your roads will become deserted. "'If in spite of these things you do not allow yourselves to be disciplined and you walk in hostility against me, I myself will also walk in hostility against you and strike you seven times on account of your sins. I will bring on you an avenging sword, a covenant vengeance. Although you will gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you and you will be given into enemy hands. When I break off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven; they will ration your bread by weight, and you will eat and not be satisfied. "'If in spite of this you do not obey me but walk in hostility against me, I will walk in hostile rage against you and I myself will also discipline you seven times on account of your sins. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars, and I will stack your dead bodies on top of the lifeless bodies of your idols. I will abhor you. I will lay your cities waste and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will refuse to smell your soothing aromas. I myself will make the land desolate and your enemies who live in it will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and unsheathe the sword after you, so your land will become desolate and your cities will become a waste. "'Then the land will make up for its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land will rest and make up its Sabbaths. All the days of the desolation it will have the rest it did not have on your Sabbaths when you lived on it. "'As for the ones who remain among you, I will bring despair into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a blowing leaf will pursue them, and they will flee as one who flees the sword and fall down even though there is no pursuer. They will stumble over each other as those who flee before a sword, though there is no pursuer, and there will be no one to take a stand for you before your enemies. You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will consume you. "'As for the ones who remain among you, they will rot away because of their iniquity in the lands of your enemies, and they will also rot away because of their ancestors' iniquities which are with them.

But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." Know for certain that the Lord has spoken. Verse ConceptsRebellion, Of IsraelWar As God's JudgmentGod Might Kill His People

They are saying, 'Announce to the surrounding nations, "The enemy is coming!" Proclaim this message to Jerusalem: "Those who besiege cities are coming from a distant land. They are ready to raise the battle cry against the towns in Judah."' They will surround Jerusalem like men guarding a field because they have rebelled against me," says the Lord. "The way you have lived and the things you have done will bring this on you. This is the punishment you deserve, and it will be painful indeed. The pain will be so bad it will pierce your heart."

I will eliminate from among you the rebels and those who revolt against me. I will bring them out from the land where they have been residing, but they will not come to the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Verse ConceptsKnowledge, Of GodPurgingEntering The KingdomBeing Cleansed From Sin

The prophet then said to him, "This is what the Lord says, 'Because you released a man I had determined should die, you will pay with your life and your people will suffer instead of his people.'" Verse ConceptsProphets, Role OfSubstitutionPredestination, Of PersonsAnnihilationEquality Of PunishmentPeople Set Free By People

Remind me of what happened! Let's debate! You, prove to me that you are right! Verse ConceptsLogicReasoningSuing GodThe Pastremembrancepastvindication

Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about all the disaster I intend to bring on them, they will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. If they do, I will forgive their sins and the wicked things they have done." Verse ConceptsAssurance, nature ofPlansGod Will Bring HarmGod Will Forgive

Come, let's consider your options," says the Lord. "Though your sins have stained you like the color red, you can become white like snow; though they are as easy to see as the color scarlet, you can become white like wool. If you have a willing attitude and obey, then you will again eat the good crops of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword." Know for certain that the Lord has spoken.


If only it would really be their desire to fear me and obey all my commandments in the future, so that it may go well with them and their descendants forever. Verse ConceptsFear Of The LordPenitentReceptive HeartsFear God!Keep The Commandments!

Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people." Verse ConceptsPrayer, Described AsGod Answers PrayerFree Moral AgencyAnger And Forgivenesssupplicationpetition

Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why is your expression downcast? Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it." Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. read more.
Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" And he replied, "I don't know! Am I my brother's guardian?" But the Lord said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!