Moab's messengers say to the people of Judah, “Be kind and help us! Shade us from the heat of the noonday sun. Hide our refugees! Don't turn them away.
More cedar in your palace doesn't make you a better king than your father Josiah. He always did right— he gave justice to the poor and was honest. That's what it means to truly know me. So he lived a comfortable life and always had enough to eat and drink.
and refuses to do anything evil or to charge interest. And he obeys all my laws and teachings. Such a man will live. His own father sinned, but this good man will not be put to death for the sins of his father.
My message today is the same one I commanded the earlier prophets to speak to Jerusalem and its villages when they were prosperous, and when all of Judah, including the Southern Desert and the hill country, was filled with people.