Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”

He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him:

Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God:

Have you not read this Scripture: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;

And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:

But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him. And now they are ready, waiting for your consent.”

So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised, so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction.