If you really are pleased with me, show me your ways so that I can know you and so that you will continue to be pleased with me. Remember: This nation is your people.”
The king told Zadok, “Take God’s ark back to the city. If the Lord looks favorably on me, he will allow me to come back and see both it and its dwelling place again.
The Lord said, “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I have heard them crying out because of the slave drivers. I know how much they’re suffering.
Don’t let the Egyptians say, ‘He was planning all along to kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth. That’s why he brought them out ⌞of our land⌟.’ Don’t be so angry. Reconsider your decision to bring this disaster on your people.
Then he said, “Lord, please go with us! Even though we are impossible to deal with, forgive our sin and the wrong we have done, and accept us as your own people.”
Later Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says: Let my people go into the desert to celebrate a festival in my honor.”
O Lord, why do you let us wander from your ways and become so stubborn that we are unable to fear you? Return for the sake of your servants. They are the tribes that belong to you.
The priests who serve the Lord cry between the altar and the entrance to the temple. They say, “Spare your people, O Lord. Don’t let the people who belong to you become a disgrace. Don’t let the nations ridicule them. Why should people ask, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
I prayed to the Lord and said, “Almighty Lord, don’t destroy your people. They belong to you. You saved them by your great power and used your mighty hand to bring them out of Egypt.
We ask this so that you will live the kind of lives that prove you belong to the Lord. Then you will want to please him in every way as you grow in producing every kind of good work by this knowledge about God.