When the king heard what was written in the Law, he tore his clothes in despair.

王听见律法上的话，就撕裂衣服，

王听见律法的话，就撕裂衣服。

王听见律法的话，就撕裂衣服。

王听了律法书上的话，就撕裂衣服，

王一听见律法书上的话，就撕裂自己的衣服，

王聽見律法上的話，就撕裂衣服，

王聽見律法的話，就撕裂衣服。

王聽見律法的話，就撕裂衣服。

王聽了律法書上的話，就撕裂衣服，

王一聽見律法書上的話，就撕裂自己的衣服，

王聽見《律法書》上的話，便撕裂衣服。

王聞法律之言、自裂其衣、

王聞律例所言、自裂其衣、

王聞律法之言、自裂其衣、

When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his robes.

The king heard the words of the Law. When he did, he tore his royal robes.

And when the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his clothes.

When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his clothes.

Thus it happened, when the king heard the words of the Law, that he tore his clothes.

And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes.

When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes.

When the king heard the words of the law scroll, he tore his clothes.

When the king had heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes.

Joshua and the elders of Israel tore their clothing in dismay, threw dust on their heads, and bowed face down to the ground before the Ark of the Lord until evening.

When the king heard what was written in the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes in despair.

For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law— I stopped trying to meet all its requirements— so that I might live for God.

Your towns and your fields will be blessed.Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed.Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed.Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed.“ The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven!“ The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.“ If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do.Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.“ The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops.The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom.You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.“ But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:Your towns and your fields will be cursed.Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed.Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed.Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.“ The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me.The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy.The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron.The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.“ The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.“ The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic.You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.“ You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit.Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you.You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment.You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you.The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.“ The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone!You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.“ You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops.You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines.You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens.You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.“ The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!“ If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed.These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever.If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received,you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.“ The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand,a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young.Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death.They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land— the walls you trusted to protect you— are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.“ The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you.The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children.He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring— the flesh of one of his own children— because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.The most tender and delicate woman among you— so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot— will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter.She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.“ If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God,then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick.He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief.The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed.Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.“ Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy.For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair.Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.In the morning you will say,‘ If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say,‘ If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you.Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”

But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say,“ Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law.”So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say,“ It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”This way of faith is very different from the way of law, which says,“ It is through obeying the law that a person has life.”But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures,“ Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said,“ You must not covet.”But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power.At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life,and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead.Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.

It was late autumn, and the king was in a winterized part of the palace, sitting in front of a fire to keep warm.Each time Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king took a knife and cut off that section of the scroll. He then threw it into the fire, section by section, until the whole scroll was burned up.Neither the king nor his attendants showed any signs of fear or repentance at what they heard.

You were sorry and humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I said against this city and its people— that this land would be cursed and become desolate. You tore your clothing in despair and wept before me in repentance. And I have indeed heard you, says the Lord.

When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on burlap and went into the Temple of the Lord.

Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish.