'Thinking' in the Bible

So Sarah laughed to herself, thinking, "After I am worn out will I have pleasure, especially when my husband is old too?"

The man replied, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid, thinking, "Surely what I did has become known."

Pharaoh was thinking, "The people of the land are now many, and you are giving them rest from their labor."

The Gazites were told, "Samson has come here!" So they surrounded the town and hid all night at the city gate, waiting for him to leave. They relaxed all night, thinking, "He will not leave until morning comes; then we will kill him!"

After some time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, thinking, "I asked the Lord for him.

Samuel replied to Saul, "I am the seer! Go up in front of me to the high place! Today you will eat with me and in the morning I will send you away. I will tell you everything that you are thinking.

Then Samuel said, "Bring me King Agag of the Amalekites." So Agag came to him trembling, thinking to himself, "Surely death is bitter!"

and Saul threw the spear, thinking, "I'll nail David to the wall!" But David escaped from him on two different occasions.

Saul replied, "Here is what you should say to David: 'There is nothing that the king wants as a price for the bride except a hundred Philistine foreskins, so that he can be avenged of his enemies.'" (Now Saul was thinking that he could kill David by the hand of the Philistines.)

Now David had been thinking, "In vain I guarded everything that belonged to this man in the desert. I didn't take anything from him. But he has repaid my good with evil.

Neither man nor woman would David leave alive so as to bring them back to Gath. He was thinking, "This way they can't tell on us, saying, 'This is what David did.'" Such was his practice the entire time that he lived in the country of the Philistines.

So Achish trusted David, thinking to himself, "He is really hated among his own people in Israel! From now on he will be my servant."

David was very upset, for the men were thinking of stoning him; each man grieved bitterly over his sons and daughters. But David drew strength from the Lord his God.

The king got up in the night and said to his advisers, "I will tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know we are starving, so they left the camp and hid in the field, thinking, 'When they come out of the city, we will capture them alive and enter the city.'"

"Yes, I know what you are thinking, the schemes by which you would wrong me.

And the eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight, thinking, 'No eye can see me,' and covers his face with a mask.

The law of their God controls their thinking; their feet do not slip.

Do not curse a king even in your thoughts, and do not curse the rich while in your bedroom; for a bird might report what you are thinking, or some winged creature might repeat your words.

Those who see you stare at you, they look at you carefully, thinking: "Is this the man who shook the earth, the one who made kingdoms tremble?

Your thinking is perverse! Should the potter be regarded as clay? Should the thing made say about its maker, "He didn't make me"? Or should the pottery say about the potter, "He doesn't understand"?

Their tongues are like deadly arrows. They are always telling lies. Friendly words for their neighbors come from their mouths. But their minds are thinking up ways to trap them.

Their children are always thinking about their altars and their sacred poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah, set up beside the green trees on the high hills

But you are always thinking and looking for ways to increase your wealth by dishonest means. Your eyes and your heart are set on killing some innocent person and committing fraud and oppression.

Moreover, I, the Lord, warn you not to deceive yourselves into thinking that the Babylonian forces will go away and leave you alone. For they will not go away.

Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon me and said to me, "Say: This is what the Lord says: 'This is what you are thinking, O house of Israel; I know what goes through your minds.

When the king heard this, he was very upset and began thinking about how he might rescue Daniel. Until late afternoon he was struggling to find a way to rescue him.

Now when Jesus realized what they were thinking, he said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is destroyed, and no town or house divided against itself will stand.

Now immediately, when Jesus realized in his spirit that they were contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, "Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?

But they were startled and terrified, thinking they saw a ghost.

While Peter was still thinking seriously about the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Look! Three men are looking for you.

Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking. Instead, be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

Therefore when I was planning to do this, I did not do so without thinking about what I was doing, did I? Or do I make my plans according to mere human standards so that I would be saying both "Yes, yes" and "No, no" at the same time?

Have you been thinking all this time that we have been defending ourselves to you? We are speaking in Christ before God, and everything we do, dear friends, is to build you up.

So I say this, and insist in the Lord, that you no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth,

In fact, if they had been thinking of the land that they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.