yet you hate what is good, and love what is evil. You flay my people’s skin and rip the flesh from their bones.

Then someone will ask him, ‘What are these wounds on your chest?’ and he will answer, ‘Some that I received in the house of my friends.’

You seem to love your enemies and hate your friends! For you have as much as declared today that leaders and servants don’t matter to you. I realize now that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, it would be all right with you.

therefore, take note: I am about to gather all your lovers whom you enjoyed, both all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around, and I will expose your nakedness to them, and they will see all your nakedness.

Then Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took her as his wife and loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

Then prepare for me some tasty food, the kind I love, and bring it to me. Then I will eat it so that I may bless you before I die.”

Go to the flock and get me two of the best young goats. I’ll prepare them in a tasty way for your father, just the way he loves them.

Jacob had marital relations with Rachel as well. He loved Rachel more than Leah, so he worked for Laban for seven more years.

So Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “The Lord has looked with pity on my oppressed condition. Surely my husband will love me now.”

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was a son born to him late in life, and he made a special tunic for him.

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated Joseph and were not able to speak to him kindly.

We said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young boy who was born when our father was old. The boy’s brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him.’

But if the servant should declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’

The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Moreover, because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants who followed them and personally brought you out of Egypt with his great power

So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

However, only to your ancestors did he show his loving favor, and he chose you, their descendants, from all peoples – as is apparent today.

However, if the servant says to you, “I do not want to leave you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you,

The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being and so that you may live.

May all your enemies perish like this, O Lord! But may those who love you shine like the rising sun at its brightest!” And the land had rest for forty years.