Isaiah 31:6

²²Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backsliding. “Behold, we have come to you; for you are the LORD our God.

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.

¹⁰Yet for all this her treacherous sister, Judah, has not returned to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense,” says the LORD.

⁷Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, to our God, for he will freely pardon.

⁹Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that they did more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel.

¹⁰The LORD spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they didn’t listen. ¹¹Therefore the LORD brought on them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh in chains, bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.

¹²When he was in distress, he begged the LORD his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. ¹³He prayed to him; and he was entreated by him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God.

¹⁴Now after this, he built an outer wall to David’s city on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entrance at the fish gate. He encircled Ophel with it, and raised it up to a very great height; and he put valiant captains in all the fortified cities of Judah. ¹⁵He took away the foreign gods and the idol out of the LORD’s house, and all the altars that he had built in the mountain of the LORD’s house and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city. ¹⁶He built up the LORD’s altar, and offered sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving on it, and commanded Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.

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.

⁴Ah sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity, offspring^[+] of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are estranged and backward. ⁵Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

¹²“Yet even now,” says the LORD, “turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.” ¹³Tear your heart and not your garments, and turn to the LORD, your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and relents from sending calamity.

¹⁹“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, so that there may come times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord,

²⁰but declared first to them of Damascus, at Jerusalem, and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance.