“As for you, Solomon, my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and a willing soul, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the mind’s thoughts. If you search for him, he will be found; but if you abandon him, he will cast you off forever.
On the next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I may be able to make atonement for your sin.”
If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and then becomes the wife of another, Can she return to the first? Would not this land be wholly defiled? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers, and yet you would return to me!—oracle of the Lord.
Now, therefore, Israel, what does the Lord, your God, ask of you but to fear the Lord, your God, to follow in all his ways, to love and serve the Lord, your God, with your whole heart and with your whole being,
For I know that after my death you are sure to act corruptly and to turn aside from the way along which I commanded you, so that evil will befall you in time to come because you have done what is evil in the Lord’s sight, and provoked him by your deeds. The Song of Moses.
but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.
They said to Samuel, “Pray to the Lord your God for us, your servants, that we may not die for having added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.”