“Remember now, O Lord, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart and have done what is good in your sight.” Hezekiah wept bitterly.
I know, my God, that you search the heart and take pleasure in uprightness; in the uprightness of my heart I have freely offered all these things, and now I have seen your people who are present here offering freely and joyously to you.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
You will be in the right, O Lord, when I lay charges against you, but let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them, and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me.
O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth? You have struck them, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.
Indeed, this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience: we have behaved in the world with holiness and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God—and all the more toward you.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”