Do not persuade me to leave you
or go back and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go,
and wherever you live, I will live;
your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.

²⁴ A man with many friends may be harmed,^[a]
but there is a friend who stays closer than a brother.^(A)

¹⁰ Don’t abandon your friend or your father’s friend,^(A)
and don’t go to your brother’s house
in your time of calamity;
better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away.^(B)