Bible Verses About Select Readings

Haman had just fallen on the couch where Ester was, when the king returned from the palace garden to the wine banquet. He shouted, "Is he even going to rape the queen here in the palace, before my very eyes?" The moment these words left the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face.

Harvonah, one of the king's attendants, said, "Look! The gallows seventy-five feet high that Haman made for Mordekhai, who spoke only good for the king, is standing at Haman's house."The king said, "Hang him on it."

So they hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordekhai. Then the king's anger subsided.

"A human being, born from a woman, lives a short, trouble-filled life.

He comes up like a flower and withers away, flees like a shadow, doesn't last.

You fix your eyes on a creature like this? You drag him to court with you?

Who can bring what is pure from something impure? No one!

Since his days are fixed in advance, the number of his months is known to you, and you have fixed the limits which he can't cross;

look away from him, and let him be; so that, like a hired worker, he can finish his day in peace.

"For a tree, there is hope that if cut down, it will sprout again, that its shoots will continue to grow.

Even if its roots grow old in the earth and its stump dies in the ground,

yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.

But when a human being grows weak and dies, he expires; and then where is he?

"There are mines for silver and places where gold is refined;

iron is extracted from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore.

Miners conquer the darkness and dig as far in as they can, to the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

There where no one lives, they break open a shaft; the feet passing over are oblivious to them; far from people, suspended in space, they swing to and fro.

"While the earth is [peacefully] yielding bread, underneath, it is being convulsed as if by fire;

its rocks have veins of sapphire, and there are flecks of gold.

Birds of prey don't know that path, no falcon's eye has seen it,

the proud beasts have never set foot on it, no lion has ever passed over it.

"[The miner] attacks the flint, overturns mountains at their roots,

and cuts out galleries in the rock, all the while watching for something of value.

He dams up streams to keep them from flooding, and brings what was hidden out into the light.

"But where can wisdom be found? Where is the source of understanding?