²⁰ “The whole city is in an uproar because of these Jews!” they shouted to the city officials.

⁴ You adulterers!^[a] Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

² Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

²² But we want to hear what you believe, for the only thing we know about this movement is that it is denounced everywhere.”

The World’s Hatred

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. ¹⁹ The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. ²⁰ Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you.

³⁴ But when the crowd realized he was a Jew, they started shouting again and kept it up for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

² There he became acquainted with a Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently arrived from Italy with his wife, Priscilla. They had left Italy when Claudius Caesar deported all Jews from Rome.

⁶ Not finding them there, they dragged out Jason and some of the other believers^[a] instead and took them before the city council. “Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world,” they shouted, “and now they are here disturbing our city, too. ⁷ And Jason has welcomed them into his home. They are all guilty of treason against Caesar, for they profess allegiance to another king, named Jesus.”

⁸ The people of the city, as well as the city council, were thrown into turmoil by these reports.

³ King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.

⁸ Then Haman approached King Xerxes and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So it is not in the king’s interest to let them live. ⁹ If it please the king, issue a decree that they be destroyed, and I will give 10,000 large sacks^[a] of silver to the government administrators to be deposited in the royal treasury.”