“As for you, my son Shelomoh, know the Elohim of your father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a pleasing life, for יהוה searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you do seek Him, He is found by you; but if you forsake Him, He rejects you forever.
And he went out to face Asa, and said to him, “Hear me, Asa, and all Yehuḏah and Binyamin. יהוה is with you while you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He is found by you, but if you forsake Him, He forsakes you.
Alas, sinning nation, a people loaded with crookedness, a seed of evil-doers, sons acting corruptly! They have forsaken יהוה, they have provoked the Set-apart One of Yisra’ĕl, they went backward.
transgressing, and being untrue to יהוה, and turning away from our Elohim, speaking oppression and apostasy, conceiving and pondering words of falsehood from the heart.
And when you say in your heart, “Why has this come upon me?” It is because of your great crookedness that your skirts have been uncovered, your heels made bare.
“Because they have forsaken Me and have profaned this place, and have burned incense in it to other mighty ones whom neither they, their fathers, nor the sovereigns of Yehuḏah have known, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocents,
“For My people have done two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns, which do not hold water.
“Your own evil instructs you, and your backslidings reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter that you have forsaken יהוה your Elohim, and that My fear is not in you,” declares the Master יהוה of hosts.
because of their evil which they have done to provoke Me, by going to burn incense by serving other mighty ones whom they did not know, they nor you nor your fathers.
All this is for the transgression of Ya‛aqoḇ and for the sins of the house of Yisra’ĕl. What is the transgression of Ya‛aqoḇ? Is it not Shomeron? And what are the high places of Yehuḏah? Are they not Yerushalayim?
He found him in a wilderness, And in a wasted, howling desert. He encompassed him, He made him understand, He watched over him as the apple of His eye.