You were patient with them for many years, bearing witness against them through your spirit, by means of your prophets; Still they would not listen. Therefore you delivered them into the power of the peoples of the lands.
But they were contemptuous and rebelled against you: they cast your law behind their backs. They murdered your prophets who bore witness against them to bring them back to you: they were guilty of great insults.
“Because Manasseh, king of Judah, has practiced these abominations, and has done greater evil than all that was done by the Amorites before him, and has led Judah into sin by his idols,
The Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and seer: Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes, in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your ancestors and which I sent you by my servants the prophets.