“This is what the sovereign Lord says: ‘The Philistines have exacted merciless revenge, showing intense scorn in their effort to destroy Judah with unrelenting hostility.

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

David by foreseeing this spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his body experience decay.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

and with every kind of evil deception directed against those who are perishing, because they found no place in their hearts for the truth so as to be saved.

But we are not among those who shrink back and thus perish, but are among those who have faith and preserve their souls.

But these men do not understand the things they slander, and they are being destroyed by the very things that, like irrational animals, they instinctively comprehend.

God sent an angel to ravage Jerusalem. As he was doing so, the Lord watched and relented from his judgment. He told the angel who was destroying, “That’s enough! Stop now!” Now the Lord’s angel was standing near the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

For the music director; according to the al-tashcheth style; a prayer of David, written when he fled from Saul into the cave. Have mercy on me, O God! Have mercy on me! For in you I have taken shelter. In the shadow of your wings I take shelter until trouble passes.

Why do you forget the Lord, who made you, who stretched out the sky and founded the earth? Why do you constantly tremble all day long at the anger of the oppressor, when he makes plans to destroy? Where is the anger of the oppressor?

The people say, “Why are we just sitting here? Let us gather together inside the fortified cities. Let us at least die there fighting, since the Lord our God has condemned us to die. He has condemned us to drink the poison waters of judgment because we have sinned against him.

what if there are five less than the fifty godly people? Will you destroy the whole city because five are lacking?” He replied, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”

At dawn the angels hurried Lot along, saying, “Get going! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be destroyed when the city is judged!”

“‘Surely anything which a man permanently dedicates to the Lord from all that belongs to him, whether from people, animals, or his landed property, must be neither sold nor redeemed; anything permanently dedicated is most holy to the Lord.

and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy!

You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

This is what will happen: Just as the Lord delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

for the Lord determined to make them obstinate so they would attack Israel. He wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy, as he had instructed Moses.

But the Lord struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.

Saul said, “They were brought from the Amalekites; the army spared the best of the flocks and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord our God. But everything else we slaughtered.”