Study Desk

You gave them as many children as there are stars in the sky, and let them conquer and live in the land that you had promised their ancestors to give them.

Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or some other language and didn't know how to speak our language.

I reprimanded the men, called down curses on them, beat them, and pulled out their hair. Then I made them take an oath in God's name that never again would they or their children intermarry with foreigners.

Runners took this proclamation to every province of the empire. It contained the instructions that on a single day, the thirteenth day of Adar, all Jews—young and old, women and children—were to be killed. They were to be slaughtered without mercy and their belongings were to be taken.

These letters explained that the king would allow the Jews in every city to organize for self-defense. If armed men of any nationality in any province attacked the Jewish men, their children, or their women, the Jews could fight back and destroy the attackers; they could slaughter them to the last man and take their possessions.

The morning after each feast, Job would get up early and offer sacrifices for each of his children in order to purify them. He always did this because he thought that one of them might have sinned by insulting God unintentionally.

One day when Job's children were having a feast at the home of their oldest brother,

Before he had finished speaking, another servant came and said, "Your children were having a feast at the home of your oldest son,

Like lions with nothing to kill and eat, they die, and all their children are scattered.

Their children can never find safety; no one stands up to defend them in court.

You will have as many children as there are blades of grass in a pasture.

Your children must have sinned against God, and so he punished them as they deserved.

Our children win honor, but we never know it, nor are we told when they are disgraced.

In the old proverb someone betrays his friends for money, and his children suffer for it.

Children despise me and laugh when they see me.

and their children will make good what they stole from the poor.

They have children and grandchildren, and live to watch them all grow up.

Their children run and play like lambs

When our lives are over, do we really care whether our children are happy?

So the poor, like wild donkeys, search for food in the dry wilderness; nowhere else can they find food for their children.