Thematic Bible: Straying


Thematic Bible



Like a bird that wanders from its nest, so is a person who wanders from his home.

Then the Lord spoke about these people. "They truly love to go astray. They cannot keep from running away from me. So I am not pleased with them. I will now call to mind the wrongs they have done and punish them for their sins."

(Samek) I hate people with divided loyalties, but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield. I find hope in your word. Turn away from me, you evil men, so that I can observe the commands of my God. read more.
Sustain me as you promised, so that I will live. Do not disappoint me! Support me, so that I will be delivered. Then I will focus on your statutes continually. You despise all who stray from your statutes, for they are deceptive and unreliable.

The one who wanders from the way of wisdom will end up in the company of the departed.


But false prophets arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. These false teachers will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies, even to the point of denying the Master who bought them. As a result, they will bring swift destruction on themselves. And many will follow their debauched lifestyles. Because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced long ago is not sitting idly by; their destruction is not asleep. read more.
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world, and if he turned to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he condemned them to destruction, having appointed them to serve as an example to future generations of the ungodly, and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men, (for while he lived among them day after day, that righteous man was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) -- if so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from their trials, and to reserve the unrighteous for punishment at the day of judgment, especially those who indulge their fleshly desires and who despise authority. Brazen and insolent, they are not afraid to insult the glorious ones, yet even angels, who are much more powerful, do not bring a slanderous judgment against them before the Lord. But these men, like irrational animals -- creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed -- do not understand whom they are insulting, and consequently in their destruction they will be destroyed, suffering harm as the wages for their harmful ways. By considering it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight, they are stains and blemishes, indulging in their deceitful pleasures when they feast together with you. Their eyes, full of adultery, never stop sinning; they entice unstable people. They have trained their hearts for greed, these cursed children! By forsaking the right path they have gone astray, because they followed the way of Balaam son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, yet was rebuked for his own transgression (a dumb donkey, speaking with a human voice, restrained the prophet's madness). These men are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm, for whom the utter depths of darkness have been reserved. For by speaking high-sounding but empty words they are able to entice, with fleshly desires and with debauchery, people who have just escaped from those who reside in error. Although these false teachers promise such people freedom, they themselves are enslaved to immorality. For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved.

There are those who rebel against the light; they do not know its ways and they do not stay on its paths. Before daybreak the murderer rises up; he kills the poor and the needy; in the night he is like a thief. And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight, thinking, 'No eye can see me,' and covers his face with a mask. read more.
In the dark the robber breaks into houses, but by day they shut themselves in; they do not know the light. For all of them, the morning is to them like deep darkness; they are friends with the terrors of darkness. "You say, 'He is foam on the face of the waters; their portion of the land is cursed so that no one goes to their vineyard.

Discretion will protect you, understanding will guard you, to deliver you from the way of the wicked, from those speaking perversity, who leave the upright paths to walk on the dark ways, read more.
who delight in doing evil, they rejoice in perverse evil; whose paths are morally crooked, and who are devious in their ways; to deliver you from the adulteress, from the sexually loose woman who speaks flattering words; who leaves the husband from her younger days, and forgets her marriage covenant made before God. For her house sinks down to death, and her paths lead to the place of the departed spirits. None who go in to her will return, nor will they reach the paths of life.

For the ways of a person are in front of the Lord's eyes, and the Lord weighs all that person's paths. The wicked will be captured by his own iniquities, and he will be held by the cords of his own sin. He will die because there was no discipline; because of the greatness of his folly he will reel.


The one who leads the upright astray in an evil way will himself fall into his own pit, but the blameless will inherit what is good.

Cursed is the one who misleads a blind person on the road.' Then all the people will say, 'Amen!'


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