On the fourth day they said to Samson's wife, "Trick your husband into telling us what the riddle means. If you don't, we'll set fire to your father's house and burn you with it. You two invited us so that you could rob us, didn't you?"

but Saul said nothing that day, because he thought, "Something has happened to him, and he is not ritually pure."

Jonathan answered, "He begged me to let him go to Bethlehem.

Saul became furious with Jonathan and said to him, "How rebellious and faithless your mother was! Now I know you are taking sides with David and are disgracing yourself and that mother of yours!

"Why should he die?" Jonathan replied. "What has he done?"

and he said to his officers, "Listen, men of Benjamin! Do you think that David will give fields and vineyards to all of you, and make you officers in his army?

Is that why you are plotting against me? Not one of you told me that my own son had made an alliance with David. No one is concerned about me or tells me that David, one of my own men, is right now looking for a chance to kill me, and that my son has encouraged him!"

The king said, "Ahimelech, you and all your relatives must die."

So Saul said to Doeg, "You kill them!"---and Doeg killed them all. On that day he killed eighty-five priests who were qualified to carry the ephod.

and Nabal finally answered, "David? Who is he? I've never heard of him! The country is full of runaway slaves nowadays!

I'm not going to take my bread and water, and the animals I have butchered for my sheepshearers, and give them to people who come from I don't know where!"

Then all the Israelites went to the king and said to him, "Your Majesty, why did our brothers, the men of Judah, think they had the right to take you away and escort you, your family, and your men across the Jordan?"

The Israelites replied, "We have ten times as many claims on King David as you have, even if he is one of you. Why do you look down on us? Don't forget that we were the first to talk about bringing the king back!" But the men of Judah were more violent in making their claims than the men of Israel.

There happened to be in Gilgal a worthless character named Sheba son of Bikri, of the tribe of Benjamin. He blew the trumpet and called out, "Down with David! We won't follow him! Men of Israel, let's go home!"

He replied, "If the LORD won't help you, what help can I provide? Do I have any wheat or wine?

He exclaimed, "May God strike me dead if Elisha is not beheaded before the day is over!"

When an intelligent person brings a lawsuit against a fool, the fool only laughs and becomes loud and abusive.

So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.

Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: "Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him."

When Herod realized that the visitors from the East had tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and younger---this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star had appeared.

Some Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what our Law says you cannot do on the Sabbath?"

They were filled with rage and began to discuss among themselves what they could do to Jesus.

The Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus had not washed before eating.

When Jesus left that place, the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees began to criticize him bitterly and ask him questions about many things,

trying to lay traps for him and catch him saying something wrong.

So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus too,

"We gave you strict orders not to teach in the name of this man," he said; "but see what you have done! You have spread your teaching all over Jerusalem, and you want to make us responsible for his death!"

The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from death, after you had killed him by nailing him to a cross.

We are witnesses to these things---we and the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to those who obey him."

But he was opposed by some men who were members of the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), which had Jews from Cyrene and Alexandria. They and other Jews from the provinces of Cilicia and Asia started arguing with Stephen.

So they bribed some men to say, "We heard him speaking against Moses and against God!"

As the members of the Council listened to Stephen, they became furious and ground their teeth at him in anger.

"Look!" he said. "I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!"

threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses left their cloaks in the care of a young man named Saul.

A certain silversmith named Demetrius made silver models of the temple of the goddess Artemis, and his business brought a great deal of profit to the workers.

Now, you can see and hear for yourselves what this fellow Paul is doing. He says that hand-made gods are not gods at all, and he has succeeded in convincing many people, both here in Ephesus and in nearly the whole province of Asia.

As the crowd heard these words, they became furious and started shouting, "Great is Artemis of Ephesus!"