We have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our leaders and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
For they had not listened to the voice of Adonai their God, but transgressed His covenant—all that Moses the servant of Adonai had commanded—they neither listened nor did it.
From the days of our fathers to this day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, our kings and our kohanim have been subjected to the sword, to captivity, to plunder and to humiliation at the hand of the kings of the lands, as it is today.
You bore with them for many years and admonished them by Your Ruach through the hand of Your prophets. Yet they would not listen, so You handed them over to the peoples of the lands.
“So now, our God—the great, mighty and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy—do not let all the hardship that has befallen us seem insignificant to you—our kings, our leaders, our kohanim, our prophets, our ancestors and all Your people, from the time of the kings of Assyria to this day.
Our kings, our leaders, our kohanim, and our ancestors have not kept Your Torah or paid attention to Your mitzvot or Your testimonies by which you have admonished them.
because they have not listened to My words,” declares Adonai, “which I sent to them by My servants the prophets, sending them early and often, but you would not hear.” It is a declaration of Adonai.
While you were doing all these things,” declares Adonai, “I spoke to you early and often, but you did not listen, and I called you but you did not answer.
But they did not listen or pay attention. Instead they followed their own counsel, in the stubbornness of their evil heart. They have gone backward and not forward,
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers—not recognizing Him or the sayings of the Prophets that are read every Shabbat—fulfilled these words by condemning Him.