From there he went up to Bethel. As he was going up along the road, some young boys came out of the city. They mocked him saying to him, “Go on up, baldy! Go on up, baldy!”
As for me, I have not run away from being a shepherd after You, nor have I desired the woeful day. What came out of my lips You know—it was before You.
But if I say: “I won’t mention Him, or speak any more in His Name,” then it is like fire burning in my heart— shut up in my bones— I weary myself holding it in, but I cannot.
‘Adonai has made you kohen instead of Jehoiada the kohen, so that there should be officers in the House of Adonai for every madman prophesying and so that you will put him in the stocks and iron collar.
The days of punishment have come; the days of retribution have come. Let Israel know! The prophet is a fool; the man of the spirit is mad! For great is your iniquity and great the hostility.
So he prayed to Adonai and said, “Please, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my own country? That’s what I anticipated, fleeing to Tarshish—for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and full of kindness, and relenting over calamity.
Nevertheless I myself am filled with power— with the Ruach Adonai— with judgment, and with might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.
Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What’s this babbler trying to say?” while others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities”—because he was proclaiming the Good News of Yeshua and the resurrection.