² For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.^{(A) 3} When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape!^{(B) 4} But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief;^{(C) 5} for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. ⁶ So, then, let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober,^{(D) 7} for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night.^(E)

Exhortation to Watch

³⁴ “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day does not catch you unexpectedly,^(A)

²⁷ They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. ²⁸ Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building,^{(A) 29} but on the day that Lot left Sodom it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them;

³⁸ For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark,

¹⁶ They went out at noon, while Ben-hadad was drinking himself drunk in the booths, he and the thirty-two kings allied with him.^{(A) 17} The young men who served the district governors went out first. Ben-hadad had sent out scouts,^[a] and they reported to him, “Men have come out from Samaria.” ¹⁸ He said, “If they have come out for peace, take them alive; if they have come out for war, take them alive.”^(B)

¹⁹ But these had already come out of the city: the young men who served the district governors and the army that followed them. ²⁰ Each killed his man; the Arameans fled, and Israel pursued them, but King Ben-hadad of Aram escaped on a horse with the cavalry. ²¹ The king of Israel went out, attacked the horses and chariots, and inflicted a massive defeat on the Arameans.

²² Then the prophet approached the king of Israel and said to him, “Come, strengthen yourself, and consider well what you have to do, for in the spring the king of Aram will come up against you.”^(C)

⁹ But his servant Zimri, commander of half his chariots, conspired against him. When he was at Tirzah drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza, who was in charge of the palace at Tirzah,^(A)

²⁸ Then Absalom commanded his servants, “Watch when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say to you, ‘Strike Amnon,’ then kill him. Do not be afraid; have I not myself commanded you? Be courageous and valiant.”^(A)

¹⁶ When he had taken him down, they were spread out all over the ground, eating and drinking and dancing, because of the great amount of spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah.^{(A) 17} David attacked them from twilight until the evening of the next day. Not one of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled.^(B)