Do not bow down to their gods or worship them, and do not adopt their religious practices. Destroy their gods and break down their sacred stone pillars.

The LORD said, "Do not make idols or set up statues, stone pillars, or carved stones to worship. I am the LORD your God.

and then you will not associate with these peoples left among you or speak the names of their gods or use those names in taking vows or worship those gods or bow down to them.

If you do not keep the covenant which the LORD your God commanded you to keep and if you serve and worship other gods, then in his anger he will punish you, and soon none of you will be left in this good land that he has given you."

But when the leader died, the people would return to the old ways and behave worse than the previous generation. They would serve and worship other gods, and stubbornly continue their own evil ways.

The LORD had made a covenant with them and had ordered them: "Do not worship other gods; do not bow down to them or serve them or offer sacrifices to them.

So those people worshiped the LORD, but they also worshiped their idols; and to this day their descendants continue to do the same.

When Amaziah returned from defeating the Edomites, he brought their idols back with him, set them up, worshiped them, and burned incense to them.

A person uses part of a tree for fuel and part of it for making an idol. With one part he builds a fire to warm himself and bake bread; with the other part he makes a god and worships it.

The maker of idols hasn't the wit or the sense to say, "Some of the wood I burned up. I baked some bread on the coals, and I roasted meat and ate it. And the rest of the wood I made into an idol. Here I am bowing down to a block of wood!"

"All this I will give you," the Devil said, "if you kneel down and worship me."

"Do not worship any other god, because I, the LORD, tolerate no rivals.

because the LORD your God is like a flaming fire; he tolerates no rivals.

If you do worship other gods, the LORD's anger will come against you like fire and will destroy you completely, because the LORD your God, who is present with you, tolerates no rivals.

With their idols they have made me angry, jealous with their so-called gods, gods that are really not gods. So I will use a so-called nation to make them angry; I will make them jealous with a nation of fools.

Joshua said to the people, "But you may not be able to serve the LORD. He is a holy God and will not forgive your sins. He will tolerate no rivals,

They angered him with their heathen places of worship, and with their idols they made him furious.

A husband is never angrier than when he is jealous; his revenge knows no limits.

He will not accept any payment; no amount of gifts will satisfy his anger.

He reached out what seemed to be a hand and grabbed me by the hair. Then in this vision God's spirit lifted me high in the air and took me to Jerusalem. He took me to the inner entrance of the north gate of the Temple, where there was an idol that was an outrage to God.

The Lord let him capture King Jehoiakim and seize some of the Temple treasures. He took some prisoners back with him to the temple of his gods in Babylon, and put the captured treasures in the temple storerooms.

The LORD God tolerates no rivals; he punishes those who oppose him. In his anger he pays them back.

Or do we want to make the Lord jealous? Do we think that we are stronger than he?

I keep my promise for thousands of generations and forgive evil and sin; but I will not fail to punish children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their parents."

I myself will turn against you and your whole family and against all who join you in being unfaithful to me and worshiping Molech. I will no longer consider any of you my people.

Your hunger will be so great that you will eat your own children.

The few of you who survive in the land of your enemies will waste away because of your own sin and the sin of your ancestors.

"But your descendants will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors, who resisted me and rebelled against me,

'I, the LORD, am not easily angered, and I show great love and faithfulness and forgive sin and rebellion. Yet I will not fail to punish children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their parents.'

Your children will wander in the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last one of you dies.

He is going to punish the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the Israelites when they were coming from Egypt.

Go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Don't leave a thing; kill all the men, women, children, and babies; the cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys."

During David's reign there was a severe famine which lasted for three full years. So David consulted the LORD about it, and the LORD said, "Saul and his family are guilty of murder; he put the people of Gibeon to death."

So hand over seven of his male descendants, and we will hang them before the LORD at Gibeah, the hometown of Saul, the LORD's chosen king." "I will hand them over," the king answered.

"Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Since he has done this, I will not bring disaster on him during his lifetime; it will be during his son's lifetime that I will bring disaster on Ahab's family."

But the LORD's fierce anger had been aroused against Judah by what King Manasseh had done, and even now it did not die down.

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

You claim God punishes a child for the sins of his father. No! Let God punish the sinners themselves; let him show that he does it because of their sins.

Do not punish us for the sins of our ancestors. Have mercy on us now; we have lost all hope.

May the LORD remember the evil of his ancestors and never forgive his mother's sins.

Because you ruined your country and killed your own people, you will not be buried like other kings. None of your evil family will survive.

Let the slaughter begin! The sons of this king will die because of their ancestors' sins. None of them will ever rule the earth or cover it with cities.

"I have already decided on their punishment, and their sentence is written down. I will not overlook what they have done, but will repay them

for their sins and the sins of their ancestors. They have burned incense at pagan hill shrines and spoken evil of me. So I will punish them as their past deeds deserve."

"And so I, the LORD, will state my case against my people again. I will bring charges against their descendants.

You have shown constant love to thousands, but you also punish people for the sins of their parents. You are a great and powerful God; you are the LORD Almighty.

And so I tell you that I will send you prophets and wise men and teachers; you will kill some of them, crucify others, and whip others in the synagogues and chase them from town to town.

I tell you indeed: the punishment for all these murders will fall on the people of this day!

but he will not hesitate to punish those who hate him.

that I will sharpen my flashing sword and see that justice is done. I will take revenge on my enemies and punish those who hate me.

Those who hate me would bow in fear before me; their punishment would last forever.

Those who do not find me hurt themselves; anyone who hates me loves death."

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I keep telling it that its ways are bad.

"If the world hates you, just remember that it has hated me first.

Whoever hates me hates my Father also.

They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not done among them the things that no one else ever did; as it is, they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father.

and speak evil of one another; they are hateful to God, insolent, proud, and boastful; they think of more ways to do evil; they disobey their parents;

And so people become enemies of God when they are controlled by their human nature; for they do not obey God's law, and in fact they cannot obey it.

Unfaithful people! Don't you know that to be the world's friend means to be God's enemy? If you want to be the world's friend, you make yourself God's enemy.