13. (a) “Mockings and scourgings” were suffered by whom? (b) Who experienced “bonds and prisons”?

¹³ If we have faith, we will be able to endure persecution. (Read Hebrews 11:36-38.)

14. (a) Who was among those “stoned”? (b) Who may have been “sawn asunder”?

¹⁴ “They were stoned,” said Paul. One such man of faith was Zechariah, son of priest Jehoiada. Enveloped by God’s spirit, he spoke out against Judah’s apostates. The result? At the order of King Jehoash, conspirators pelted him to death with stones in the courtyard of Jehovah’s house. (2 Chronicles 24:20-22; Matthew 23:33-35) Paul added: “They were tried, they were sawn asunder.” He may have thought of the prophet Micaiah as one of those who “were tried,” and uncertain Jewish tradition has it that Isaiah was sawed in two during King Manasseh’s reign.​—1 Kings 22:24-28.

15. Who suffered “ill-treatment” and “wandered about in deserts”?

¹⁵ Others “died by slaughter with the sword,” as, for example, Elijah’s fellow prophets of God who were “killed with the sword” in the days of wicked King Ahab. (1 Kings 19:9, 10) Elijah and Elisha were among those with faith who “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, while they were in want, in tribulation, under ill-treatment.” (1 Kings 19:5-8, 19; 2 Kings 1:8; 2:13; compare Jeremiah 38:6.) Those who “wandered about in deserts and mountains and caves and dens of the earth” as objects of persecution must include not only Elijah and Elisha but also the 100 prophets that Obadiah hid by 50’s in a cave, supplying them with bread and water when idolatrous Queen Jezebel started to “cut off Jehovah’s prophets.” (1 Kings 18:4, 13; 2 Kings 2:13; 6:13, 30, 31) What integrity keepers! No wonder Paul said: “The world [unrighteous human society] was not worthy of them”!