and when he got a good look at David, he was filled with scorn for him because he was just a nice, good-looking boy.

"Come on," he challenged David, "and I will give your body to the birds and animals to eat."

from Benhadad: "I will bring enough men to destroy this city of yours and carry off the rubble in their hands. May the gods strike me dead if I don't!"

He ordered, "Take them alive, no matter whether they are coming to fight or to ask for peace."

In front of his companions and the Samaritan troops he said, "What do these miserable Jews think they're doing? Do they intend to rebuild the city? Do they think that by offering sacrifices they can finish the work in one day? Can they make building stones out of heaps of burnt rubble?"

I prayed, "Hear how they make fun of us, O God! Let their ridicule fall on their own heads. Let them be robbed of everything they have, and let them be taken as prisoners to a foreign land.

Be merciful to us, LORD, be merciful; we have been treated with so much contempt.

We have been mocked too long by the rich and scorned by proud oppressors.

The emperor of Assyria boasts, "I have done it all myself. I am strong and wise and clever. I wiped out the boundaries between nations and took the supplies they had stored. Like a bull I have trampled the people who live there.

The nations of the world were like a bird's nest, and I gathered their wealth as easily as gathering eggs. Not a wing fluttered to scare me off; no beak opened to scream at me!"

I will make a bargain with you in the name of the emperor. I will give you two thousand horses if you can find that many riders.

You are no match for even the lowest ranking Assyrian official, and yet you expect the Egyptians to send you chariots and horsemen.