His prayer and how his supplication was heard, all his sins and his treachery, the sites where he built high places and set up asherahs and carved images before he humbled himself, all this is recorded in the chronicles of his seers.
I thought: How I would like to make you my children! So I gave you a pleasant land, the most beautiful heritage among the nations! You would call me, “My Father,” I thought, and you would never turn away from me.
Is Ephraim not my favored son, the child in whom I delight? Even though I threaten him, I must still remember him! My heart stirs for him, I must show him compassion!—oracle of the Lord.
If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. The Golden Rule.
But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’