אָב

And some of the heads of the families gave to the treasury for the project 20,000 darics of gold and 2,200 minas of silver.

On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and Levites, gathered around Ezra the scribe to study the words of the Law.

Those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all the foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.

You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt; You heard their cry at the Red Sea.

But they and our fathers became arrogant and stiff-necked and did not obey Your commandments.

You multiplied their descendants like the stars of heaven and brought them to the land You had told their fathers to enter and possess.

So now, our God, the great and mighty and awesome God who keeps His gracious covenant, do not view lightly all the hardship that has come upon us, and upon our kings and leaders, our priests and prophets, our ancestors and all Your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until today.

Our kings and leaders and priests and fathers did not obey Your law or listen to Your commandments and warnings that You gave them.

So here we are today as slaves in the land You gave our fathers to enjoy its fruit and goodness—here we are as slaves!

We have cast lots among the priests, Levites, and people for the donation of wood by our families at the appointed times each year. They are to bring it to the house of our God to burn on the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the Law.

…and his associates, the leaders of families—242 men; Amashai son of Azarel, the son of Ahzai, the son of Meshillemoth, the son of Immer;

In the days of Joiakim, these were the heads of the priestly families: of the family of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah;

In the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua, during the reign of Darius the Persian, the heads of the families of the Levites and priests were recorded.

As for the descendants of Levi, the family heads up to the days of Johanan son of Eliashib were recorded in the Book of the Chronicles.

Did not your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this disaster on us and on this city? And now you are rekindling His wrath against Israel by profaning the Sabbath!”

And Mordecai had brought up Hadassah (that is, Esther), the daughter of his uncle, because she did not have a father or mother. The young woman was lovely in form and appearance, and when her father and mother had died, Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter.

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows if perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

Please inquire of past generations and consider the discoveries of their fathers.

Both the gray-haired and the aged are on our side—men much older than your father.

…what was declared by wise men and was not concealed from their fathers,

…and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

I was a father to the needy, and I took up the case of the stranger.

“But now they mock me, men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheep dogs.

…though from my youth I reared him as would a father, and from my mother’s womb I guided the widow—

Does the rain have a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew?

No women as beautiful as Job’s daughters could be found in all the land, and their father granted them an inheritance among their brothers.

In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You delivered them.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry for help; do not be deaf to my weeping. For I am a foreigner dwelling with You, a stranger like all my fathers.

For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah. We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us the work You did in their days, in the days of old.

Listen, O daughter! Consider and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father’s house,

Your sons will succeed your fathers; you will make them princes throughout the land.

…he will join the generation of his fathers, who will never see the light of day.

A father of the fatherless and a defender of widows is God in His holy habitation.

…that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.

For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,

Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

He worked wonders before their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.

They turned back and were faithless like their fathers, twisted like a faulty bow.

He will call to Me, ‘You are my Father, my God, the Rock of my salvation.’

…where your fathers tested and tried Me, though they had seen My work.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.

We have sinned like our fathers; we have done wrong and acted wickedly.

Our fathers in Egypt did not grasp Your wonders or remember Your abundant kindness; but they rebelled by the sea, there at the Red Sea.

May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, and the sin of his mother never be blotted out.

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and do not forsake the teaching of your mother.

…for the LORD disciplines the one He loves, as does a father the son in whom he delights.

Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding.

When I was a son to my father, tender and the only child of my mother,