Thematic Bible




Thematic Bible




For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great (shocking, innumerable),
You who distress the righteous and take bribes,
And turn away from the poor in the [court of the city] gate [depriving them of justice].


“I am a joke to my friends;
I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—
A just and blameless man is a joke [and laughed to scorn].


But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked us and regarded us with contempt and said, “What is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?”

He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the heaps of dust and rubbish, even the ones that have been burned?”


I am small and despised,
But I do not forget Your precepts.

Then, as the ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter [David’s wife], looked down from the window above and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she felt contempt for him in her heart [because she thought him undignified].


“I am a joke to my friends;
I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—
A just and blameless man is a joke [and laughed to scorn].

When the Philistine looked around and saw David, he derided and disparaged him because he was [just] a young man, with a ruddy complexion, and a handsome appearance.

God has selected [for His purpose] the insignificant (base) things of the world, and the things that are despised and treated with contempt, [even] the things that are nothing, so that He might reduce to nothing the things that are,

When we are slandered, we try to be conciliatory and answer softly. We have become like the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.



“I am a joke to my friends;
I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—
A just and blameless man is a joke [and laughed to scorn].


But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked us and regarded us with contempt and said, “What is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?”

He spoke before his brothers and the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the heaps of dust and rubbish, even the ones that have been burned?”


I am small and despised,
But I do not forget Your precepts.

Then, as the ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter [David’s wife], looked down from the window above and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she felt contempt for him in her heart [because she thought him undignified].


“I am a joke to my friends;
I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—
A just and blameless man is a joke [and laughed to scorn].

When the Philistine looked around and saw David, he derided and disparaged him because he was [just] a young man, with a ruddy complexion, and a handsome appearance.

God has selected [for His purpose] the insignificant (base) things of the world, and the things that are despised and treated with contempt, [even] the things that are nothing, so that He might reduce to nothing the things that are,

When we are slandered, we try to be conciliatory and answer softly. We have become like the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.



“I am a joke to my friends;
I, one whom God answered when he called upon Him—
A just and blameless man is a joke [and laughed to scorn].