2 Chronicles 6:37

¹⁸“I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned, for you are the LORD my God. ¹⁹Surely after that I was turned. I repented. After that I was instructed. I struck my thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth.’ ²⁰Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I still earnestly remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him,” says the LORD.

⁶For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. ⁷There is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our iniquities. ⁸But now, LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay and you our potter. We all are the work of your hand. ⁹Don’t be furious, LORD. Don’t remember iniquity forever. Look and see, we beg you, we are all your people. ¹⁰Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. ¹¹Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised you is burned with fire. All our pleasant places are laid waste. ¹²Will you hold yourself back for these things, LORD? Will you keep silent and punish us very severely?

⁵we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances. ⁶We haven’t listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

⁷“Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us confusion of face, as it is today; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, who are near and who are far off, through all the countries where you have driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against you. ⁸Lord, to us belongs confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. ⁹To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him. ¹⁰We haven’t obeyed the LORD our God’s voice, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. ¹¹Yes, all Israel have transgressed your law, turning aside, that they should not obey your voice. “Therefore the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses the servant of God has been poured out on us, for we have sinned against him.

¹⁷But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough to spare, and I’m dying with hunger! ¹⁸I will get up and go to my father, and will tell him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. ¹⁹I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.”’

¹²Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, you backsliding Israel,’ says the LORD; ‘I will not look in anger on you, for I am merciful,’ says the LORD. ‘I will not keep anger forever. ¹³Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the LORD your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed my voice,’” says the LORD. ¹⁴“Return, backsliding children,” says the LORD, “for I am a husband to you. I will take one of you from a city, and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

⁴⁰“‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me, ⁴¹I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, ⁴²then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land. ⁴³The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly and to break my covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God. ⁴⁵But I will for their sake remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I am the LORD.’”

¹It shall happen, when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, ²and return to the LORD your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, ³that then the LORD your God will release you from captivity, have compassion on you, and will return and gather you from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.

²⁷He sings before men, and says, ‘I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it didn’t profit me. ²⁸He has redeemed my soul from going into the pit. My life will see the light.’

²⁶“Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you, cast your law behind their back, killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies. ²⁷Therefore you delivered them into the hand of their adversaries, who distressed them. In the time of their trouble, when they cried to you, you heard from heaven; and according to your manifold mercies you gave them saviors who saved them out of the hands of their adversaries. ²⁸But after they had rest, they did evil again before you; therefore you left them in the hands of their enemies, so that they had the dominion over them; yet when they returned and cried to you, you heard from heaven; and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, ²⁹and testified against them, that you might bring them again to your law. Yet they were arrogant, and didn’t listen to your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances (which if a man does, he shall live in them), turned their backs, stiffened their neck, and would not hear. ³⁰Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.

⁶and I said, “My God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have increased over our head, and our guiltiness has grown up to the heavens. ⁷Since the days of our fathers we have been exceedingly guilty to this day; and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to confusion of face, as it is this day.