My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.
Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return.
Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live; but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.” Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel,
I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.
The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
They return, but not upward; they are like a treacherous bow; their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.
And the Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.
The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.
The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.
“But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers; they twisted like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their high places; they moved him to jealousy with their idols.
Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the Lord now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?
“Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name's sake; for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you.
Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month— for they could not keep it at that time because the priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem— and the plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly. So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it as often as prescribed.
Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.