WISDOM OF SOLOMON AND LOVE OF MOTHER: “Now two prostitutes came to king [Solomon]. One of them said, ‘…During the night this woman’s son died …. So she … took my son … [and] put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.’… Then the king said, ‘bring me a sword [and] … gave an order, ‘Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.’ The woman whose son was alive … said to the king, ‘please … give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!’… Then the king gave his ruling. ‘Give the living baby to the first woman…. She is his mother’.” (1 Kings 3: 16-27)
ESTHER ASKS KING AHASUERUS (HER HUSBAND) NOT TO KILL THE JEWS ( HER PEOPLE): “Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to … kill ... all the Jews …. Esther … pleaded with the king … to put an end to the evil plan…. Then the king extended the gold scepter to Esther and she arose and stood before him. ‘If it pleases the king,’ she said, ‘and if he regards me with favor and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches … devised … to destroy the Jews …. For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?’ King Ahasuerus replied …. ‘Now write another decree in the king’s name ... grant[ing] the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves ….’” (Esther 3: 13; 8: 3 – 11)
JOB: “When Job’s three friends … heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out … to … comfort him…. ‘The Almighty has terrified me’, Job stated, ’yet I am not silenced by the darkness …. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul…. Man … springs up like a flower and withers away …. I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth…. My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you’.” (Job: 2: 11; 23: 16-17; 7: 11; 14: 1-2; 19: 25; 42: 5)
JEREMIAH COMMUNICATES GOD’S MESSAGE AT THE GATE OF THE TEMPLE: “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. … Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord ….’ If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors forever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless’.” (Jeremiah 7: 1-8)
DANIEL INTERPRETING WRITING ON KING BELSHAZZAR’S WALL: “King Belshazzar gave a great banquet …. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale …. So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, … ‘If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.’ Then Daniel answered the king, ‘You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing … and tell him what it means…. Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians’.” (Daniel 5: 1-30)
DAVID PLAYS THE LYRE FOR SAUL: “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him…. Saul’s attendants said … ‘Search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.’… Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, ‘Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.’… Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.” (1 Samuel 16: 14-23)