Immediately, they bowed with their faces touching the ground and said, “O God, you are the God who gives the breath of life to everyone! If one man sins, will you be angry with the whole community?”
“Please don’t be angry if I speak only one more time,” Abraham said. “What if 10 are found there?” He answered, “I will not destroy it for the sake of the 10.”
When David saw the Messenger who had been killing the people, he said to the Lord, “I’ve sinned. I’ve done wrong. What have these sheep done? Please let your punishment be against me and against my father’s family.”
I will not accuse you forever. I will not be angry with you forever. Otherwise, the spirits, the lives of those I’ve made, would grow faint in my presence.
So King Zedekiah secretly swore an oath to Jeremiah, “The Lord gave us life. As the Lord lives, I will not kill you or hand you over to these men who want to kill you.”
Moses told Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar: “Do not mourn by leaving your hair uncombed or tearing your clothes. If you do, you will die and the Lord will become angry with the whole congregation. All the other Israelites may cry over the fire the Lord sent, but you may not.
“If the anointed priest does something wrong and brings guilt on the people, he must bring a bull that has no defects as an offering for sin to the Lord.
This is the prophetic revelation, the Lord’s word about Israel. The Lord—who spread out the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit in a person—says,
On earth we have fathers who disciplined us, and we respect them. Shouldn’t we place ourselves under the authority of God, the father of spirits, so that we will live?