The king said to Abiathar the priest, “Go to Anathoth, to your own fields, for you are worthy of death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you bore the ark of the Lord God before David my father and because you shared in all the hardships my father endured.”
and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities have expanded over our heads and our wrongdoing has grown up to the heavens.
They have sown wheat, but reap thorns; they have strained themselves, but shall not profit. And they shall be ashamed of your harvest because of the fierce anger of the Lord.
Surely after I turned back, I repented; and after I was instructed, I struck myself on my thigh; I was ashamed and even humiliated because I bore the reproach of my youth.”
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? They were not at all ashamed, nor could they blush. Therefore they will fall among those who fall; in the time of their punishment they will be cast down, says the Lord.
If they are ashamed of all that they have done, show them the design of the temple and its fashion and exits and its entrances and all its forms and all its ordinances and all its laws. And write it in their sight so that they may keep its whole form and all its ordinances and do them.
who know the righteous requirement of God, that those who commit such things are worthy of death. They not only do them, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?
But we have renounced the secret things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by expressing the truth and commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
For observe this very thing, which you became sorrowful in a godly way: What carefulness it produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what intense desire, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In all things you have proven yourselves to be innocent in this matter.
How much more severe a punishment do you suppose he deserves, who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded the blood of the covenant that sanctified him to be a common thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God, and if it begins first with us, what shall the end be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?