Study Desk

Seek good and not evil so you can live! Then the Lord , the God who commands armies, just might be with you, as you claim he is.

Hate what is wrong, love what is right! Promote justice at the city gate! Maybe the Lord , the God who commands armies, will have mercy on those who are left from Joseph.

Because of Israel's sins this is what the Lord , the God who commands armies, the sovereign One, says: "In all the squares there will be wailing, in all the streets they will mourn the dead. They will tell the field workers to lament and the professional mourners to wail.

You will pick up your images of Sikkuth, your king, and Kiyyun, your star god, which you made for yourselves,

and I will drive you into exile beyond Damascus," says the Lord . He is called the God who commands armies!

The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his very own life. The Lord , the God who commands armies, is speaking: "I despise Jacob's arrogance; I hate their fortresses. I will hand over to their enemies the city of Samaria and everything in it."

"Look! I am about to bring a nation against you, family of Israel." The Lord , the God who commands armies, is speaking. "They will oppress you all the way from Lebo Hamath to the Stream of the Arabah."

These are the ones who now take oaths in the name of the sinful idol goddess of Samaria. They vow, ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,' or ‘As surely as your beloved one lives, O Beer Sheba!' But they will fall down and not get up again."

I will plant them on their land and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the Lord your God.

The vision that Obadiah saw. The Lord God says this concerning Edom: We have heard a report from the Lord . An envoy was sent among the nations, saying, "Arise! Let us make war against Edom!"

The sailors were so afraid that each cried out to his own god and they flung the ship's cargo overboard to make the ship lighter. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold below deck, had lain down, and was sound asleep.

The ship's captain approached him and said, "What are you doing asleep? Get up! Cry out to your god! Perhaps your god might take notice of us so that we might not die!"

He said to them, "I am a Hebrew! And I worship the Lord , the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."

Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish

I went down to the very bottoms of the mountains; the gates of the netherworld barred me in forever; but you brought me up from the Pit, O Lord , my God.

The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.

Every person and animal must put on sackcloth and must cry earnestly to God, and everyone must turn from their evil way of living and from the violence that they do.

Who knows? Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die."

When God saw their actions—they turned from their evil way of living!—God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and he did not destroy them.

The Lord God appointed a little plant and caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue him from his misery. Now Jonah was very delighted about the little plant.