I will remember these things as I pour out my soul: how I used to walk with the crowd and lead it in a procession to God’s house. ⌞I sang⌟ songs of joy and thanksgiving while crowds of people celebrated a festival.
They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day filled with misery, punishment, and disgrace. We are like a woman who is about to give birth but doesn’t have the strength to do it.
You call wood your father. You call stone your mother. You’ve turned your backs, not your faces, to me. But when you’re in trouble, you ask me to come and rescue you.
Get up! Cry out at night, every hour on the hour. Pour your heart out like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him ⌞in prayer⌟ for the life of your little children who faint from hunger at every street corner.”
They don’t pray to me sincerely, even though they cry in their beds and make cuts on their bodies while praying for grain and new wine. They have turned against me.
The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we criticized the Lord and you. Pray to the Lord so that he will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.