The Healing at the Pool

John 5 After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival. ²Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha. ³A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches--the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. ⁵A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"
⁷The sick man answered, "Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first."
⁸Jesus said to him, "Get up, pick up your mat, and walk." ⁹Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and started walking.
The day this happened was a Sabbath, ¹⁰so the Jewish authorities told the man who had been healed, "This is a Sabbath, and it is against our Law for you to carry your mat."
¹¹He answered, "The man who made me well told me to pick up my mat and walk."
¹²They asked him, "Who is the man who told you to do this?"
¹³But the man who had been healed did not know who Jesus was, for there was a crowd in that place, and Jesus had slipped away.
¹⁴Afterward, Jesus found him in the Temple and said, "Listen, you are well now; so stop sinning or something worse may happen to you."
¹⁵Then the man left and told the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus who had healed him. ¹⁶So they began to persecute Jesus, because he had done this healing on a Sabbath. ¹⁷Jesus answered them, "My Father is always working, and I too must work."
¹⁸This saying made the Jewish authorities all the more determined to kill him; not only had he broken the Sabbath law, but he had said that God was his own Father and in this way had made himself equal with God.

David's Military Victories
(2 Samuel 8.1-18)

1 Chronicles 18 Some time later King David attacked the Philistines again and defeated them. He took out of their control the city of Gath and its surrounding villages. ²He also defeated the Moabites, who became his subjects and paid taxes to him.
³Next, David attacked King Hadadezer of the Syrian state of Zobah, near the territory of Hamath, because Hadadezer was trying to gain control of the territory by the upper Euphrates River. ⁴David captured a thousand of his chariots, seven thousand cavalry troops, and twenty thousand foot soldiers. He kept enough horses for a hundred chariots and crippled all the rest.
⁵When the Syrians of Damascus sent an army to help King Hadadezer, David attacked it and killed twenty-two thousand men. ⁶Then he set up military camps in their territory, and they became his subjects and paid taxes to him. The LORD made David victorious everywhere. ⁷David captured the gold shields carried by Hadadezer's officials and took them to Jerusalem. ⁸He also took a great quantity of bronze from Tibhath and Kun, cities ruled by Hadadezer. (Solomon later used this bronze to make the tank, the columns, and the bronze utensils for the Temple.)
⁹King Toi of Hamath heard that David had defeated Hadadezer's entire army. ¹⁰So he sent his son Joram to greet King David and congratulate him for his victory over Hadadezer, against whom Toi had fought many times. Joram brought David presents made of gold, silver, and bronze. ¹¹King David dedicated them for use in worship, along with the silver and gold he took from the nations he conquered--Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, and Amalek.
¹²Abishai, whose mother was Zeruiah, defeated the Edomites in Salt Valley and killed eighteen thousand of them. ¹³He set up military camps throughout Edom, and the people there became King David's subjects. The LORD made David victorious everywhere.
¹⁴David ruled over all Israel and made sure that his people were always treated fairly and justly. ¹⁵Abishai's brother Joab was commander of the army; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was in charge of the records; ¹⁶Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; Seraiah was court secretary; ¹⁷Benaiah son of Jehoiada was in charge of David's bodyguards; and King David's sons held high positions in his service.

David Defeats the Ammonites and the Syrians
(2 Samuel 10.1-19)

1 Chronicles 19 Some time later King Nahash of Ammon died, and his son Hanun became king. ²King David said, "I must show loyal friendship to Hanun, as his father Nahash did to me." So David sent messengers to express his sympathy.
When they arrived in Ammon and called on King Hanun, ³the Ammonite leaders said to the king, "Do you think that it is in your father's honor that David has sent these men to express sympathy to you? Of course not! He has sent them here as spies to explore the land, so that he can conquer it!"
⁴Hanun seized David's messengers, shaved off their beards, cut off their clothes at the hips, and sent them away. ⁵They were too ashamed to return home. When David heard what had happened, he sent word for them to stay in Jericho and not return until their beards had grown again.
⁶King Hanun and the Ammonites realized that they had made David their enemy, so they paid nearly forty tons of silver to hire chariots and charioteers from Upper Mesopotamia and from the Syrian states of Maacah and Zobah. ⁷The thirty-two thousand chariots they hired and the army of the king of Maacah came and camped near Medeba. The Ammonites too came out from all their cities and got ready to fight.
⁸When David heard what was happening, he sent out Joab and the whole army. ⁹The Ammonites marched out and took up their position at the entrance to Rabbah, their capital city, and the kings who had come to help took up their position in the open countryside.
¹⁰Joab saw that the enemy troops would attack him in front and from the rear, so he chose the best of Israel's soldiers and put them in position facing the Syrians. ¹¹He placed the rest of his troops under the command of his brother Abishai, who put them in position facing the Ammonites. ¹²Joab said to him, "If you see that the Syrians are defeating me, come and help me, and if the Ammonites are defeating you, I will go and help you. ¹³Be strong and courageous! Let's fight hard for our people and for the cities of our God. And may the LORD's will be done."
¹⁴Joab and his men advanced to attack, and the Syrians fled. ¹⁵When the Ammonites saw the Syrians running away, they fled from Abishai and retreated into the city. Then Joab went back to Jerusalem.
¹⁶The Syrians realized that they had been defeated by the Israelites, so they brought troops from the Syrian states on the east side of the Euphrates River and placed them under the command of Shobach, commander of the army of King Hadadezer of Zobah. ¹⁷When David heard of it, he gathered the Israelite troops, crossed the Jordan River, and put them in position facing the Syrians. The fighting began, ¹⁸and the Israelites drove the Syrian army back. David and his men killed seven thousand Syrian chariot drivers and forty thousand foot soldiers. They also killed the Syrian commander, Shobach. ¹⁹When the kings who were subject to Hadadezer realized that they had been defeated by Israel, they made peace with David and became his subjects. ²⁰The Syrians were never again willing to help the Ammonites.

The LORD Condemns Insincere Fasting

Zechariah 7 In the fourth year that Darius was emperor, on the fourth day of the ninth month (the month of Kislev), the LORD gave me a message.
²The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men to the Temple of the LORD Almighty to pray for the LORD's blessing ³and to ask the priests and the prophets this question: "Should we continue to mourn because of the destruction of the Temple, by fasting in the fifth month as we have done for so many years now?"
⁴This is the message of the LORD that came to me. ⁵He said, "Tell the people of the land and the priests that when they fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during these seventy years, it was not in honor of me. ⁶And when they ate and drank, it was for their own satisfaction."
⁷This is what the LORD said through the earlier prophets at the time when Jerusalem was prosperous and filled with people and when there were many people living not only in the towns around the city but also in the southern region and in the western foothills.

Disobedience, the Cause of Exile

⁸The LORD gave this message to Zechariah: ⁹"Long ago I gave these commands to my people: 'You must see that justice is done, and must show kindness and mercy to one another. ¹⁰Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need. And do not plan ways of harming one another.'
¹¹"But my people stubbornly refused to listen. They closed their minds ¹²and made their hearts as hard as rock. Because they would not listen to the teaching which I sent through the prophets who lived long ago, I became very angry. ¹³Because they did not listen when I spoke, I did not answer when they prayed. ¹⁴Like a storm I swept them away to live in foreign countries. This good land was left a desolate place, with no one living in it."