¹³ But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”^(A)

²¹ When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I strike them? Shall I strike them?”^(A)

Death of Elisha

¹⁴ Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die, King Joash of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”^(A)

¹² Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.^(A)

¹⁴ I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.^(A)

²¹ And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for^[a] a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,^(A)

Jeremiah Is Rescued by Ebed-melech

⁷ Ebed-melech the Cushite, a eunuch in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern. The king happened to be sitting at the Benjamin Gate,^{(A) 8} So Ebed-melech left the king’s house and spoke to the king, ⁹ “My lord king, these men have acted wickedly in all they did to the prophet Jeremiah by throwing him into the cistern to die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.”^{(B) 10} Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Cushite, “Take three^[a] men with you from here, and pull the prophet Jeremiah up from the cistern before he dies.”

²² let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.^(A)

⁵ he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water^[a] of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.^(A)