And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him. And he refused to be comforted, and said, I will go down to Sheol mourning for my son. And his father wept for him.
And the king trembled. And he went up to the upper room of the gate and wept. And he said this as he went, My son! My son Absalom! My son Absalom! Oh that I had died instead of you, my son Absalom, my son!
And he said, I came naked out of my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away. Blessed be the name of Jehovah.
And He said to me, Son of man, these bones are all the house of Israel. Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is perished; we are cut off to ourselves.
But I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, that often I purposed to come to you, and was kept back until the present, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among the other nations.
For, brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant as to our affliction having happened to us in Asia, that we were beyond measure burdened beyond our power, so as for us even to despair of living.
that at that time you were without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers of the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
among whom we also all conducted ourselves in times past in the lusts of our flesh, acting out the wills of the flesh and of the understandings, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest.
For we say this to you in the Word of the Lord, that we the living who remain to the coming of the Lord will not at all go before the ones having fallen asleep.
But let not this one thing escape your notice, beloved ones, that one day with the Lord is “as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Psa. 90:4