Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The One Year Bible TLB (255 page)
December 5These are the messages from the Lord to Hosea, son of Beeri, during the reigns of these four kings of Judah:
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; and one of the kings of Israel, Jeroboam, son of Joash.
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Here is the first message:
The Lord said to Hosea, “Go and marry a girl who is a prostitute, so that some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, committing open adultery against me by worshiping other gods.”
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So Hosea married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
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And the Lord said, “Name the child Jezreel, for in the valley of Jezreel I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed;
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in fact, I will put an end to Israel as an independent kingdom, breaking the power of the nation in the valley of Jezreel.”
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Soon Gomer had another child—this one a daughter. And God said to Hosea, “Name her Lo-ruhamah (meaning ‘No more mercy’) for I will have no more mercy upon Israel, to forgive her again.
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But I
will
have mercy on the tribe of Judah. I will personally free her from her enemies without any help from her armies or her weapons.”
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After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again conceived and this time gave birth to a son.
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And God said, “Call him Lo-ammi (meaning ‘Not mine’), for Israel is not mine and I am not her God.
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“Yet the time will come when Israel shall prosper and become a great nation; in that day her people will be too numerous to count—like sand along a seashore! Then, instead of saying to them, ‘You are not my people,’ I will tell them, ‘You are my sons, children of the Living God.’
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Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite and have one leader; they will return from exile together; what a day that will be—the day when God will sow his people in the fertile soil of their own land again.
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2:
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“O Jezreel,
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rename your brother and sister. Call your brother Ammi (which means ‘Now you are mine’); name your sister Ruhamah (‘Pitied’), for now God will have mercy upon her!
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“Plead with your mother, for she has become another man’s wife—I am no longer her husband. Beg her to stop her harlotry, to quit giving herself to others.
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If she doesn’t, I will strip her as naked as the day she was born and cause her to waste away and die of thirst as in a land riddled with famine and drought.
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And I will not give special favors to her children as I would to my own, for they are not my children; they belong to other men.
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“For their mother has committed adultery. She did a shameful thing when she said, ‘I’ll run after other men and sell myself to them for food and drinks and clothes.’
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“But I will fence her in with briars and thornbushes; I’ll block the road before her to make her lose her way, so that
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when she runs after her lovers, she will not catch up with them. She will search for them but not find them. Then she will think, ‘I might as well return to my husband, for I was better off with him than I am now.’
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“She doesn’t realize that all she has, has come from me. It was I who gave her all the gold and silver she used in worshiping Baal, her god!
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“But now I will take back the wine and ripened corn I constantly supplied, and the clothes I gave her to cover her nakedness—I will no longer give her rich harvests of grain in its season or wine at the time of the grape harvest.
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Now I will expose her nakedness in public for all her lovers to see, and no one will be able to rescue her from my hand.
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“I will put an end to all her joys, her parties, holidays, and feasts.
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I will destroy her vineyards and her orchards—gifts she claims her lovers gave her—and let them grow into a jungle; wild animals will eat their fruit.
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“For all the incense she burned to Baal her idol and for the times when she put on her earrings and jewels and went out looking for her lovers and deserted me—for all these things I will punish her,” says the Lord.
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“But I will court her again and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her tenderly there.
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There I will give back her vineyards to her and transform her Valley of Troubles into a Door of Hope. She will respond to me there, singing with joy as in days long ago in her youth after I had freed her from captivity in Egypt.
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“In that coming day,” says the Lord, “she will call me ‘My Husband’ instead of ‘My Master.’
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O Israel, I will cause you to forget your idols, and their names will not be spoken anymore.
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“At that time I will make a treaty between you and the wild animals, birds, and snakes, not to fear each other anymore; and I will destroy all weapons, and all wars will end.
“Then you will lie down in peace and safety, unafraid;
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and I will bind you to me forever with chains of righteousness and justice and love and mercy.
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I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and love, and you will really know me then as you never have before.
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“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will answer the pleading of the sky for clouds, to pour down water on the earth in answer to its cry for rain. Then the earth can answer the parched cry of the grain, the grapes, and the olive trees for moisture and for dew—and the whole grand chorus shall sing together that ‘God sows!’
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He has given all!
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“At that time I will sow a crop of Israelites and raise them for myself! I will pity those who are ‘not pitied,’
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and I will say to those who are ‘not my people,’ ‘Now you are my people’; and they will reply, ‘You are our God!’”
3:
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Then the Lord said to me, “Go, and get your wife again and bring her back to you and love her, even though she loves adultery. For the Lord still loves Israel though she has turned to other gods and offered them choice gifts.”
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So I bought her back from her slavery
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for a couple of dollars and eight bushels of barley,
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and I said to her, “You must live alone for many days; do not go out with other men nor be a prostitute, and I will wait for you.”
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This illustrates the fact that Israel will be a long time without a king or prince, and without an altar, Temple, priests, or even idols!
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Afterward they will return to the Lord their God and to the Messiah, their King,
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and they shall come trembling, submissive to the Lord and to his blessings in the end times.
If you believe that Jesus is the Christ—that he is God’s Son and your Savior—then you are a child of God. And all who love the Father love his children too.
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So you can find out how much you love God’s children—your brothers and sisters in the Lord—by how much you love and obey God.
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Loving God means doing what he tells us to do, and really, that isn’t hard at all;
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for every child of God can obey him, defeating sin and evil pleasure by trusting Christ to help him.
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But who could possibly fight and win this battle except by believing that Jesus is truly the Son of God?
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And we know he is, because God said so with a voice from heaven when Jesus was baptized, and again as he was facing death
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—yes, not only at his baptism but also as he faced death. And the Holy Spirit, forever truthful, says it too. So we have these three witnesses: the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the voice from heaven at Christ’s baptism, and the voice before he died. And they all say the same thing: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
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We believe men who witness in our courts, and so surely we can believe whatever God declares. And God declares that Jesus is his Son.
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All who believe this know in their hearts that it is true. If anyone doesn’t believe this, he is actually calling God a liar because he doesn’t believe what God has said about his Son.
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And what is it that God has said? That he has given us eternal life and that this life is in his Son.
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So whoever has God’s Son has life; whoever does not have his Son, does not have life.
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I have written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life.
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And we are sure of this, that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will.
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And if we really know he is listening when we talk to him and make our requests, then we can be sure that he will answer us.
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If you see a Christian sinning in a way that does not end in death, you should ask God to forgive him, and God will give him life unless he has sinned that one fatal sin. But there is that one sin which ends in death, and if he has done that, there is no use praying for him.
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Every wrong is a sin, of course. I’m not talking about these ordinary sins; I am speaking of that one that ends in death.
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No one who has become part of God’s family makes a practice of sinning, for Christ, God’s Son, holds him securely, and the devil cannot get his hands on him.
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We know that we are children of God and that all the rest of the world around us is under Satan’s power and control.
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And we know that Christ, God’s Son, has come to help us understand and find the true God. And now we are in God because we are in Jesus Christ his Son, who is the only true God; and he is eternal Life.
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Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. Amen.
Sincerely, John
If the Lord had not been on our side (let all Israel admit it), if the Lord had not been on our side,
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we would have been swallowed alive by our enemies, destroyed by their anger.
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We would have drowned beneath the flood of these men’s fury and pride.
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Blessed be Jehovah who has not let them devour us.
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We have escaped with our lives as a bird from a hunter’s snare. The snare is broken and we are free!
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Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
Flattery is a trap; evil men are caught in it, but good men stay away and sing for joy.
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The good man knows the poor man’s rights; the godless don’t care.
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Fools start fights everywhere while wise men try to keep peace.
December 6Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel. The Lord has filed a lawsuit against you listing the following charges: “There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land.
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You swear and lie and kill and steal and commit adultery. There is violence everywhere, with one murder after another.
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“That is why your land is not producing; it is filled with sadness, and all living things grow sick and die; the animals, the birds, and even the fish begin to disappear.
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“Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame to him! Look, priest, I am pointing my finger at
you.
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As a sentence for your crimes, you priests will stumble in broad daylight as well as in the night, and so will your false ‘prophets’ too; and I will destroy your mother, Israel.
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My people are destroyed because they don’t know me, and it is all your fault, you priests, for you yourselves refuse to know me; therefore, I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since you have forgotten my laws, I will ‘forget’ to bless your children.
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The more my people multiplied, the more they sinned against me. They exchanged the glory of God for the disgrace of idols.
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“The priests rejoice in the sins of the people; they lap it up and lick their lips for more!
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And thus it is: ‘Like priests, like people’—because the priests are wicked, the people are too. Therefore, I will punish both priests and people for all their wicked deeds.
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They will eat and still be hungry. Though they do a big business as prostitutes, they shall have no children, for they have deserted me and turned to other gods.
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“Wine, women, and song have robbed my people of their brains.
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For they are asking a piece of wood to tell them what to do. ‘Divine Truth’ comes to them through tea leaves!
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Longing after idols has made them foolish. For they have played the harlot, serving other gods, deserting me.
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They sacrifice to idols on the tops of mountains; they go up into the hills to burn incense in the pleasant shade of oaks and poplars and sumac trees.
“There your daughters turn to prostitution and your brides commit adultery.
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But why should I punish them? For you men are doing the same thing, sinning with harlots and temple prostitutes. Fools! Your doom is sealed, for you refuse to understand.
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“But though Israel is a prostitute, may Judah stay far from such a life. O Judah, do not join with those who insincerely worship me at Gilgal and at Bethel. Their worship is mere pretense.
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Don’t be like Israel, stubborn as a heifer, resisting the Lord’s attempts to lead her in green pastures.
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Stay away from her, for she is wedded to idolatry.
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“The men of Israel finish up their drinking bouts, and off they go to find some whores. Their love for shame is greater than for honor.
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“Therefore, a mighty wind shall sweep them away;
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they shall die in shame because they sacrifice to idols.
5:
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“Listen to this, you priests and all of Israel’s leaders; listen, all you men of the royal family: You are doomed! For you have deluded the people with idols at Mizpah and Tabor
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and dug a deep pit to trap them at Acacia. But never forget—I will settle up with all of you for what you’ve done.
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“I have seen your evil deeds: Israel, you have left me as a prostitute leaves her husband; you are utterly defiled.
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Your deeds won’t let you come to God again, for the spirit of adultery is deep within you, and you cannot know the Lord.
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“The very arrogance of Israel testifies against her in my court. She will stumble under her load of guilt, and Judah, too, shall fall.
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Then at last, they will come with their flocks and herds to sacrifice to God, but it will be too late—they will not find him. He has withdrawn from them and they are left alone.
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“For they have betrayed the honor of the Lord, bearing children that aren’t his. Suddenly they and all their wealth will disappear.
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Sound the alarm! Warn with trumpet blasts in Gibeah and Ramah, and on over to Beth-aven; tremble, land of Benjamin!
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Hear this announcement, Israel: When your day of punishment comes, you will become a heap of rubble.
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“The leaders of Judah have become the lowest sort of thieves.
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Therefore, I will pour my anger down upon them like a waterfall,
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and Ephraim will be crushed and broken by my sentence because she is determined to follow idols.
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I will destroy her as a moth does wool; I will sap away the strength of Judah like dry rot.”
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“When Ephraim and Judah see how sick they are, Ephraim will turn to Assyria, to the great king there, but he can neither help nor cure.
From:
John, the old Elder of the church.
To:
That dear woman Cyria, one of God’s very own, and to her children whom I love so much, as does everyone else in the church.
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Since the Truth is in our hearts forever,
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God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son will bless us with great mercy and much peace, and with truth and love.
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How happy I am to find some of your children here and to see that they are living as they should, following the Truth, obeying God’s command.
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And now I want to urgently remind you, dear friends, of the old rule God gave us right from the beginning, that Christians should love one another.
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If we love God, we will do whatever he tells us to. And he has told us from the very first to love each other.
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Watch out for the false leaders—and there are many of them around—who don’t believe that Jesus Christ came to earth as a human being with a body like ours. Such people are against the truth and against Christ.
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Beware of being like them and losing the prize that you and I have been working so hard to get. See to it that you win your full reward from the Lord.
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For if you wander beyond the teaching of Christ, you will leave God behind; while if you are loyal to Christ’s teachings, you will have God too. Then you will have both the Father and the Son.
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If anyone comes to teach you, and he doesn’t believe what Christ taught, don’t even invite him into your home. Don’t encourage him in any way.
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If you do, you will be a partner with him in his wickedness.
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Well, I would like to say much more, but I don’t want to say it in this letter, for I hope to come to see you soon, and then we can talk over these things together and have a joyous time.
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Greetings from the children of your sister—another choice child of God.
Sincerely, John
Those who trust in the Lord are steady as Mount Zion, unmoved by any circumstance.
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Just as the mountains surround and protect Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds and protects his people.
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For the wicked shall not rule the godly, lest the godly be forced to do wrong.
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O Lord, do good to those who are good, whose hearts are right with the Lord;
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but lead evil men to execution. And let Israel have quietness and peace.
There’s no use arguing with a fool. He only rages and scoffs, and tempers flare.
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The godly pray for those who long to kill them.
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A rebel shouts in anger; a wise man holds his temper in and cools it.