Wherever I moved among all the Israelites, I did not say to any of the leaders whom I appointed to care for my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house made from cedar?”’
and they will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, so that I may reside among them. I am the Lord their God.
For the honor of your name, do not treat Jerusalem with contempt. Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it!
The Lord rejected his altar and abhorred his temple. He handed over to the enemy her palace walls; the enemy shouted in the Lord’s temple as if it were a feast day. ח (Khet)
You must not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am about to drive out before you, because they have done all these things and I am filled with disgust against them.
The land will be abandoned by them in order that it may make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them, and they will make up for their iniquity because they have rejected my regulations and have abhorred my statutes.
In spite of this, however, when they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them and abhor them to make a complete end of them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God.
But if your own land is impure, cross over to the Lord’s own land, where the Lord himself lives, and settle down among us. But don’t rebel against the Lord or us by building for yourselves an altar aside from the altar of the Lord our God.
Phinehas, son of Eleazar, the priest, said to the Reubenites, Gadites, and the Manassehites, “Today we know that the Lord is among us, because you have not disobeyed the Lord in this. Now you have rescued the Israelites from the Lord’s judgment.”
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.