a thread opens
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: its coals are coals of fire, which has a most blazing flame.
The Vigil
Today’s scroll, one verse at a time — each linked to the last by the cross-references rather than by any model of you. The same vigil for everyone, and a different one tomorrow.
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
from Song of Solomon 8:6
But they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a doctrine of vanities.
from Deuteronomy 32:21
Every man is brutish in his knowledge: every founder is confounded by the carved image: for his cast image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
from Jeremiah 10:8
a thread opens
Then Moses said to Aaron, This is it that the LORD spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
No man that has a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come near to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he has a blemish; he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.
from Leviticus 10:3
They shall be holy to their God, and not profane the name of their God: for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and the bread of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy.
from Leviticus 21:21
And you shall not let any of your seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
from Leviticus 21:6 · a strong link
There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or a fortune-teller, or a spellcaster, or a sorceress,
from Leviticus 18:21
And you shall be holy to me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, so that you should be mine.
from Deuteronomy 18:10
But I have said to you, You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess it, a land that flows with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.
from Leviticus 20:26
a thread opens
Now to him that is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
from Jude 1:24
You have heard how I said to you, I go away, and come again to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
from John 10:29 · a strong link
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
from John 14:28
And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:
from John 5:18
Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sits on the throne shall dwell among them.
from Revelation of John 22:3 · a strong link
a thread opens
Woe to them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
And in process of time it happened, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the LORD.
from Jude 1:11
All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the firstfruits of them which they shall offer to the LORD, them have I given you.
from Genesis 4:3
The firstfruit also of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep, shall you give him.
from Numbers 18:12
You shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the firstfruits to the LORD.
from Deuteronomy 18:4
a thread opens
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
And every creature in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be to him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever.
from Luke 2:14
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.
And in that day shall you say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.
from I Chronicles 29:11 · a strong link
a thread opens
And shall not God give justice to his own elect, which cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them?
Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to repay with affliction those who afflict you;
from Luke 18:7
If I sharpen my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my enemies, and will reward them that hate me.
from II Thessalonians 1:6
In that day the LORD with his grievous and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon in the sea.
from Deuteronomy 32:41
You did divide the sea by your strength: you broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters.
from Isaiah 27:1
Speak, and say, Thus says the Lord GOD; Look, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster that lies in the midst of his rivers, which has said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself.
from Psalms 74:13
Thus says the LORD; Look, I will give Pharaoh-hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.
from Ezekiel 29:3
a thread opens
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives to the death.
from Luke 14:26 · a strong link
And the God of peace shall crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
from Romans 16:20
Gaius my host, and of the whole church, greets you. Erastus the city treasurer greets you, and Quartus a brother.
The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.
from Romans 16:23
That is the whole thread.
Every verse the cross-references reach from Song of Solomon 8:6 along this chain. Today’s own vigil is laid separately.
Each verse follows the one before it along the chain a study Bible draws — a century old, public, and compiled by people arguing about Scripture rather than about how long you stay. Every card says which verse it came from and opens the chapter it belongs to. Today’s vigil is the same for every reader and is worked out from the date alone, so there is no account, no counter, and nothing stored in your browser or ours.
The text is the Lantern Modern Standard. The links are openbible.info’s cross-reference set (CC BY), the same apparatus behind the reader’s Echoes drawer. Read a whole book · Today’s table