³ But he will turn again and favor you if only you return to him. ⁴ Don’t be like your fathers were! The earlier prophets pled in vain with them to turn from all their evil ways.

“Come, return to me,” the Lord God said. But no, they wouldn’t listen; they paid no attention at all.

^5-6 Your fathers and their prophets are now long dead, but remember the lesson they learned, that God’s Word endures! It caught up with them and punished them. Then at last they repented.

“We have gotten what we deserved from God,” they said. “He has done just what he warned us he would.”