Then the land will enjoy the years of complete rest that you would not give it; it will lie abandoned and get its rest while you are in exile in the land of your enemies.

(SEE 26:34)

and caused me to turn against them and send them into exile in the land of their enemies. At last, when your descendants are humbled and they have paid the penalty for their sin and rebellion,

"When your people sin against you---and there is no one who does not sin---and in your anger you let their enemies defeat them and take them as prisoners to some other land, even if that land is far away,

If in that land they truly and sincerely repent and pray to you as they face toward this land which you gave to our ancestors, this city which you have chosen, and this Temple which I have built for you,

In his suffering he became humble, turned to the LORD his God, and begged him for help.

Happy is the person whom God corrects! Do not resent it when he rebukes you.

Job, have you confessed your sins to God and promised not to sin again?

Have you asked God to show you your faults, and have you agreed to stop doing evil?

Call to me when trouble comes; I will save you, and you will praise me."

Before you punished me, I used to go wrong, but now I obey your word.

My punishment was good for me, because it made me learn your commands.

I know that your judgments are righteous, LORD, and that you punished me because you are faithful.

You punished your people, LORD, and in anguish they prayed to you.

We turned away from you, but soon we wanted to return. After you had punished us, we hung our heads in grief. We were ashamed and disgraced because we sinned when we were young.'

You, Lord, always do what is right, but we have always brought disgrace on ourselves. This is true of all of us who live in Judea and in Jerusalem and of all the Israelites whom you scattered in countries near and far because they were unfaithful to you.

You are merciful and forgiving, although we have rebelled against you.

Have you forgotten the encouraging words which God speaks to you as his children? "My child, pay attention when the Lord corrects you, and do not be discouraged when he rebukes you.

Endure what you suffer as being a father's punishment; your suffering shows that God is treating you as his children. Was there ever a child who was not punished by his father?

In the case of our human fathers, they punished us and we respected them. How much more, then, should we submit to our spiritual Father and live!

When we are punished, it seems to us at the time something to make us sad, not glad. Later, however, those who have been disciplined by such punishment reap the peaceful reward of a righteous life.

If you refuse to obey my laws and commands and break the covenant I have made with you,

Samaria fell because the Israelites sinned against the LORD their God, who had rescued them from the king of Egypt and had led them out of Egypt. They worshiped other gods,

The Israelites did things that the LORD their God disapproved of. They built pagan places of worship in all their towns, from the smallest village to the largest city.

and they burned incense on all the pagan altars, following the practice of the people whom the LORD had driven out of the land. They aroused the LORD's anger with all their wicked deeds

The LORD had sent his messengers and prophets to warn Israel and Judah: "Abandon your evil ways and obey my commands, which are contained in the Law I gave to your ancestors and which I handed on to you through my servants the prophets."

They refused to obey his instructions, they did not keep the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they disregarded his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols and became worthless themselves, and they followed the customs of the surrounding nations, disobeying the LORD's command not to imitate them.

They sacrificed their sons and daughters as burnt offerings to pagan gods; they consulted mediums and fortunetellers, and they devoted themselves completely to doing what is wrong in the LORD's sight, and so aroused his anger.

In addition, the leaders of Judah, the priests, and the people followed the sinful example of the nations around them in worshiping idols, and so they defiled the Temple, which the LORD himself had made holy.

But they made fun of God's messengers, ignoring his words and laughing at his prophets, until at last the LORD's anger against his people was so great that there was no escape.

If you refuse to obey my laws and commands and break the covenant I have made with you,

I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols. In utter disgust

You refuse to let me correct you; you reject my commands.

You people hate anyone who challenges injustice and speaks the whole truth in court.

I lost patience with three other shepherds, who hated me, and I got rid of them all in a single month.

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I keep telling it that its ways are bad.

Whoever hates me hates my Father also.

They would not have been guilty of sin if I had not done among them the things that no one else ever did; as it is, they have seen what I did, and they hate both me and my Father.

And so people become enemies of God when they are controlled by their human nature; for they do not obey God's law, and in fact they cannot obey it.