¹⁵ “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them.

¹⁶ “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice^(A) and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident,^(B) so that a plague^(C) struck the Lord’s people.

²⁵ (There was never^(A) anyone like Ahab, who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel his wife.

²⁶ Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him.^(A) He was loved by his God,^(B) and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women.^(C)