Punishment

Punishment takes human form here — Hadad is described as raised up by God, meaning the adversary who now threatens Solomon is the direct, purposeful consequence of earlier violence permitted to resurface.

Punishment is framed here not as divine cruelty but as the natural consequence of Saul's long pattern of ignoring God — the silence he now experiences is the accumulated result of his own choices.

Punishment is referenced here to draw a boundary — the community has punished enough, and Paul is clarifying that discipline was never meant to be permanent exclusion but a corrective with an endpoint.

Punishment appears here as the trap of worldly grief — the self-punishing loop that keeps a person focused on their own guilt rather than on the forward-moving change that godly grief produces.

The consequences God announces here — generational violence, public humiliation — are presented as proportional and purposeful, not arbitrary, flowing directly from the nature of David's own crimes.

Punishment is implicitly distinguished here from the kind of accountability Paul advocates — the social withdrawal he prescribes is not retributive but remedial, designed to produce repentance rather than simply impose a penalty.

Punishment is conspicuously absent from Jesus's commission to Paul — where condemnation might be expected, Jesus instead gives purpose, sending the man who hunted Christians to carry the message of forgiveness to the world.

Punishment is what the crowd might have expected after Peter's indictment — but Peter deliberately frames the invitation around renewal rather than retribution.

The punishment formula — 'three transgressions, and for four' — is introduced here as the repeated refrain signaling that God's patience has run its course and consequences are now locked in.

Punishment is reframed here — the sealing of the vision isn't God withholding as discipline, but a purposeful boundary set by one who sees the full arc that Daniel cannot yet see.

Punishment is calibrated here with exact proportionality — the false witness receives precisely the sentence they intended for the accused, making the cost of lying in court equal to the harm it would have caused.

Punishment is notably absent here — the heifer ritual is not about penalizing someone, but about communal accountability when no guilty party can be identified or prosecuted.

Punishment here refers to the public penalty imposed on the slandering husband — a significant fine, corporal punishment, and permanent loss of divorce rights, designed to deter false accusations against wives.

Punishment is explicitly individualized here — limited to the person who committed the offense, not extended to family members, countering the collective retribution practices common across ancient Near Eastern legal systems.

Punishment here is grotesquely disproportionate — Haman refuses to limit consequences to Mordecai alone, instead expanding one man's defiance into a death sentence for an entire ethnic group.

Punishment is defined here by strict proportionality — the injury sets the ceiling for the response, preventing the escalating blood feuds that devastated communities throughout the ancient world.

Punishment is noted here as the frame God deliberately moves away from — the laws about theft and property damage are designed around restoration to the victim, not retribution against the offender.

Punishment is invoked here as the road not taken — the passage notes that God responded to the golden calf crisis with a construction project rather than condemnation, highlighting his grace over retribution.

Punishment here takes the form of institutional cruelty — Pharaoh's new policy is not corrective but designed to crush, withdrawing resources while maintaining impossible quotas to break the people's spirit.