I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek, inquire for, and demand Your servant, for I do not forget Your commandments. [Isa. 53:6; Luke 15:4; I Pet. 2:25.]
Draw me after you; let us make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.
Indeed, I heard Ephraim pleading: “You disciplined me, and I took the discipline; I was like an untrained calf. Bring me back; let me come back, for you are the Lord my God.
My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains; from mountain to hill they have gone, they have forgotten their fold.
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge! Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me; and since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles? How can you want to be enslaved to them again?
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.