Job 4:1–21 (NIV84)

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied: ² “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking? ³ Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. ⁴ Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. ⁵ But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. ⁶ Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? ⁷ “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? ⁸ As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. ⁹ At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish. ¹⁰ The lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken. ¹¹ The lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. ¹² “A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. ¹³ Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, ¹⁴ fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. ¹⁵ A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. ¹⁶ It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice: ¹⁷ ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker? ¹⁸ If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, ¹⁹ how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth! ²⁰ Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever. ²¹ Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom?’

John 4:27–45 (NIV84)

²⁷ Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” ²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him. ³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” ³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” ³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” ³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹ And because of his words many more became believers. ⁴² They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” ⁴³ After the two days he left for Galilee. ⁴⁴ (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) ⁴⁵ When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.

Mark 1:14–15 (NIV84)

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ¹⁵ “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Luke 3:19–20 (NIV84)

¹⁹ But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, ²⁰ Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.