Questions about Marriage

1 Corinthians 7 Now, to deal with the matters you wrote about.
A man does well not to marry. ²But because there is so much immorality, every man should have his own wife, and every woman should have her own husband. ³A man should fulfill his duty as a husband, and a woman should fulfill her duty as a wife, and each should satisfy the other's needs. ⁴A wife is not the master of her own body, but her husband is; in the same way a husband is not the master of his own body, but his wife is. ⁵Do not deny yourselves to each other, unless you first agree to do so for a while in order to spend your time in prayer; but then resume normal marital relations. In this way you will be kept from giving in to Satan's temptation because of your lack of self-control.
⁶I tell you this not as an order, but simply as a permission. ⁷Actually I would prefer that all of you were as I am; but each one has a special gift from God, one person this gift, another one that gift.
⁸Now, to the unmarried and to the widows I say that it would be better for you to continue to live alone as I do. ⁹But if you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry--it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
¹⁰For married people I have a command which is not my own but the Lord's: a wife must not leave her husband; ¹¹but if she does, she must remain single or else be reconciled to her husband; and a husband must not divorce his wife.
¹²To the others I say (I, myself, not the Lord): if a Christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever and she agrees to go on living with him, he must not divorce her. ¹³And if a Christian woman is married to a man who is an unbeliever and he agrees to go on living with her, she must not divorce him. ¹⁴For the unbelieving husband is made acceptable to God by being united to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made acceptable to God by being united to her Christian husband. If this were not so, their children would be like pagan children; but as it is, they are acceptable to God. ¹⁵However, if the one who is not a believer wishes to leave the Christian partner, let it be so. In such cases the Christian partner, whether husband or wife, is free to act. God has called you to live in peace. ¹⁶How can you be sure, Christian wife, that you will not save your husband? Or how can you be sure, Christian husband, that you will not save your wife?

Live As God Called You

¹⁷Each of you should go on living according to the Lord's gift to you, and as you were when God called you. This is the rule I teach in all the churches. ¹⁸If a circumcised man has accepted God's call, he should not try to remove the marks of circumcision; if an uncircumcised man has accepted God's call, he should not get circumcised. ¹⁹For whether or not a man is circumcised means nothing; what matters is to obey God's commandments. ²⁰Each of you should remain as you were when you accepted God's call. ²¹Were you a slave when God called you? Well, never mind; but if you have a chance to become free, use it. ²²For a slave who has been called by the Lord is the Lord's free person; in the same way a free person who has been called by Christ is his slave. ²³God bought you for a price; so do not become slaves of people. ²⁴My friends, each of you should remain in fellowship with God in the same condition that you were when you were called.

War with Syria

1 Kings 20 King Benhadad of Syria gathered all his troops, and supported by thirty-two other rulers with their horses and chariots, he marched up, laid siege to Samaria, and launched attacks against it. ²He sent messengers into the city to King Ahab of Israel to say, "King Benhadad demands that ³you surrender to him your silver and gold, your women and the strongest of your children."
⁴"Tell my lord, King Benhadad, that I agree; he can have me and everything I own," Ahab answered.
⁵Later the messengers came back to Ahab with another demand from Benhadad: "I sent you word that you were to hand over to me your silver and gold, your women and your children. ⁶Now, however, I will send my officers to search your palace and the homes of your officials, and to take everything they consider valuable. They will be there about this time tomorrow."
⁷King Ahab called in all the leaders of the country and said, "You see that this man wants to ruin us. He sent me a message demanding my wives and children, my silver and gold, and I agreed."
⁸The leaders and the people answered, "Don't pay any attention to him; don't give in."
⁹So Ahab replied to Benhadad's messengers, "Tell my lord the king that I agreed to his first demand, but I cannot agree to the second."
The messengers left and then returned with another message ¹⁰from 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!"
¹¹King Ahab answered, "Tell King Benhadad that a real soldier does his bragging after a battle, not before it."
¹²Benhadad received Ahab's answer as he and his allies, the other rulers, were drinking in their tents. He ordered his men to get ready to attack the city, and so they moved into position.
¹³Meanwhile, a prophet went to King Ahab and said, "The LORD says, 'Don't be afraid of that huge army! I will give you victory over it today, and you will know that I am the LORD.'"
¹⁴"Who will lead the attack?" Ahab asked.
The prophet answered, "The LORD says that the young soldiers under the command of the district governors are to do it."
"Who will command the main force?" the king asked.
"You," the prophet answered.
¹⁵So the king called out the young soldiers who were under the district commanders, 232 in all. Then he called out the Israelite army, a total of seven thousand men.
¹⁶The attack began at noon, as Benhadad and his thirty-two allies were getting drunk in their tents. ¹⁷The young soldiers advanced first. Scouts sent out by Benhadad reported to him that a group of soldiers was coming out of Samaria. ¹⁸He ordered, "Take them alive, no matter whether they are coming to fight or to ask for peace."
¹⁹The young soldiers led the attack, followed by the Israelite army, ²⁰and each one killed the man he fought. The Syrians fled, with the Israelites in hot pursuit, but Benhadad escaped on horseback, accompanied by some of the cavalry. ²¹King Ahab took to the field, captured the horses and chariots, and inflicted a severe defeat on the Syrians.
²²Then the prophet went to King Ahab and said, "Go back and build up your forces and make careful plans, because the king of Syria will attack again next spring."

The Second Syrian Attack

²³King Benhadad's officials said to him, "The gods of Israel are mountain gods, and that is why the Israelites defeated us. But we will certainly defeat them if we fight them in the plains. ²⁴Now, remove the thirty-two rulers from their commands and replace them with field commanders. ²⁵Then call up an army as large as the one that deserted you, with the same number of horses and chariots. We will fight the Israelites in the plains, and this time we will defeat them."
King Benhadad agreed and followed their advice. ²⁶The following spring he called up his men and marched with them to the city of Aphek to attack the Israelites. ²⁷The Israelites were called up and equipped; they marched out and camped in two groups facing the Syrians. The Israelites looked like two small flocks of goats compared to the Syrians, who spread out over the countryside.
²⁸A prophet went to King Ahab and said, "This is what the LORD says: 'Because the Syrians say that I am a god of the hills and not of the plains, I will give you victory over their huge army, and you and your people will know that I am the LORD.'"
²⁹For seven days the Syrians and the Israelites stayed in their camps, facing each other. On the seventh day they started fighting, and the Israelites killed a hundred thousand Syrians. ³⁰The survivors fled into the city of Aphek, where the city walls fell on twenty-seven thousand of them.
Benhadad also escaped into the city and took refuge in the back room of a house. ³¹His officials went to him and said, "We have heard that the Israelite kings are merciful. Give us permission to go to the king of Israel with sackcloth around our waists and ropes around our necks, and maybe he will spare your life." ³²So they wrapped sackcloth around their waists and ropes around their necks, went to Ahab and said, "Your servant Benhadad pleads with you for his life."
Ahab answered, "Is he still alive? Good! He's like a brother to me!"
³³Benhadad's officials were watching for a good sign, and when Ahab said "brother," they took it up at once, and said, "As you say, Benhadad is your brother!"
"Bring him to me," Ahab ordered. When Benhadad arrived, Ahab invited him to get in the chariot with him. ³⁴Benhadad said to him, "I will restore to you the towns my father took from your father, and you may set up a commercial center for yourself in Damascus, just as my father did in Samaria."
Ahab replied, "On these terms, then, I will set you free." He made a treaty with him and let him go.

A Prophet Condemns Ahab

³⁵At the LORD's command a member of a group of prophets ordered a fellow prophet to hit him. But he refused, ³⁶so he said to him, "Because you have disobeyed the LORD's command, a lion will kill you as soon as you leave me." And as soon as he left, a lion came along and killed him.
³⁷Then this same prophet went to another man and said, "Hit me!" This man did so; he hit him a hard blow and hurt him. ³⁸The prophet bandaged his face with a cloth, to disguise himself, and went and stood by the road, waiting for the king of Israel to pass. ³⁹As the king was passing by, the prophet called out to him and said, "Your Majesty, I was fighting in the battle when a soldier brought a captured enemy to me and said, 'Guard this man; if he escapes, you will pay for it with your life or else pay a fine of three thousand pieces of silver.' ⁴⁰But I got busy with other things, and the man escaped."
The king answered, "You have pronounced your own sentence, and you will have to pay the penalty."
⁴¹The prophet tore the cloth from his face, and at once the king recognized him as one of the prophets. ⁴²The prophet then said to the king, "This is the word of the LORD: 'Because you allowed the man to escape whom I had ordered to be killed, you will pay for it with your life, and your army will be destroyed for letting his army escape.'"
⁴³The king went back home to Samaria, worried and depressed.

Israel's Failure to Learn

Amos 4 ⁴The Sovereign LORD says, "People of Israel, go to the holy place in Bethel and sin, if you must! Go to Gilgal and sin with all your might! Go ahead and bring animals to be sacrificed morning after morning, and bring your tithes every third day. ⁵Go on and offer your bread in thanksgiving to God, and brag about the extra offerings you bring! This is the kind of thing you love to do.
⁶"I was the one who brought famine to all your cities, yet you did not come back to me. ⁷I kept it from raining when your crops needed it most. I sent rain on one city, but not on another. Rain fell on one field, but another field dried up. ⁸Weak with thirst, the people of several cities went to a city where they hoped to find water, but there was not enough to drink. Still you did not come back to me.
⁹"I sent a scorching wind to dry up your crops. The locusts ate up all your gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees. Still you did not come back to me.
¹⁰"I sent a plague on you like the one I sent on Egypt. I killed your young men in battle and took your horses away. I filled your nostrils with the stink of dead bodies in your camps. Still you did not come back to me.
¹¹"I destroyed some of you as I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Those of you who survived were like a burning stick saved from a fire. Still you did not come back to me," says the LORD. ¹²"So then, people of Israel, I am going to punish you. And because I am going to do this, get ready to face my judgment!"

¹³God is the one who made the mountains
and created the winds.
He makes his thoughts known to people;
he changes day into night.
He walks on the heights of the earth.
This is his name: the LORD God Almighty!