He said, “Lord, if you are pleased with me, please go with us. I know that these are stubborn people, but forgive our evil and our sin. Take us as your own people.”
Then the Lord said to me: “I would not feel sorry for the people of Judah even if Moses and Samuel prayed for them. Send them away from me! Tell them to go!
Good should not be paid back with evil, but they have dug a pit in order to kill me. Remember that I stood before you and asked you to do good things for these people and to turn your anger away from them.
The priests, the Lord’s servants, should cry between the altar and the entrance to the Temple. They should say, “Lord, have mercy on your people. Don’t let them be put to shame; don’t let other nations make fun of them. Don’t let people in other nations ask, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
So the man said to his gardener, ‘I have been looking for fruit on this tree for three years, but I never find any. Cut it down. Why should it waste the ground?’
The Lord is not slow in doing what he promised—the way some people understand slowness. But God is being patient with you. He does not want anyone to be lost, but he wants all people to change their hearts and lives.