O Lord God of Israel, You are righteous, for we who escaped exile yet remain to this very day. Behold, we stand before You in our guilt, for we should not stand before You because of this.”
For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us. And as for our iniquities, we know them:
Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backslidings will reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter for you to have forsaken the Lord your God, and the fear of Me is not in you, says the Lord God of Hosts.
We lie down in our shame, and our humiliation covers us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”
The Lord said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there has played the harlot.
Therefore a lion out of the forest will slay them, and a wolf from the deserts will destroy them; a leopard will watch over their cities. Everyone who goes out from there will be torn in pieces, because their transgressions are many and their backslidings have increased.
Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, and let us enter the fortified cities and let us perish there. For the Lord our God has doomed us and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord.
Nevertheless I withdrew My hand and acted for My name’s sake, that it should not be polluted in the sight of the nations in whose sight I brought them out.
But I acted for My name’s sake, that it should not be polluted before the nations among whom they were, in whose sight I made Myself known to them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt.
I will endure the rage of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him, until the time when He pleads my case and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out into the light; I will look upon His vindication.
however, I feared the wrath of the enemy, that their adversaries would misunderstand and say, “Our hand is victorious, and the Lord has not done all this.”