1705 verses about Repentance

“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within me, my compassion is aroused.

I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One among you; and I will not come in wrath.

Yahweh also has a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his deeds he will repay him.

Therefore turn to your God. Keep kindness and justice, and wait continually for your God.

Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, ‘They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.’

You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your help.

Where is your king now, that he may save you in all your cities? And your judges, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes?’

The sorrows of a travailing woman will come on him. He is an unwise son; for when it is time, he doesn’t come to the opening of the womb.

Samaria will bear her guilt; for she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women will be ripped open.”

Israel, return to Yahweh your God; for you have fallen because of your sin.

Take words with you, and return to Yahweh. Tell him, “Forgive all our sins, and accept that which is good: so we offer our lips like bulls.

Assyria can’t save us. We won’t ride on horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, ‘Our gods!’ for in you the fatherless finds mercy.”

“I will heal their waywardness. I will love them freely; for my anger is turned away from him.

Ephraim, what have I to do any more with idols? I answer, and will take care of him. I am like a green cypress tree; from me your fruit is found.”

Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

Mourn like a virgin dressed in sackcloth for the husband of her youth!

Put on sackcloth and mourn, you priests! Wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God, for the meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from your God’s house.

Sanctify a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders, and all the inhabitants of the land, to the house of Yahweh, your God, and cry to Yahweh.

“Yet even now,” says Yahweh, “turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.”

Tear your heart, and not your garments, and turn to Yahweh, your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and relents from sending calamity.

Who knows? He may turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meal offering and a drink offering to Yahweh, your God.

Blow the trumpet in Zion! Sanctify a fast. Call a solemn assembly.

Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare your people, Yahweh, and don’t give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you.

“Go to Bethel, and sin; to Gilgal, and sin more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days,

“I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in every town; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.

“I struck you with blight and mildew many times in your gardens and your vineyards; and your fig trees and your olive trees have the swarming locust devoured: yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.

“I sent plagues among you like I did Egypt. I have slain your young men with the sword, and have carried away your horses; and I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.

“I have overthrown some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick plucked out of the fire; yet you haven’t returned to me,” says Yahweh.

“Therefore thus will I do to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, Israel.

For Yahweh says to the house of Israel: “Seek me, and you will live;

but don’t seek Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and don’t pass to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

Seek Yahweh, and you will live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, and there be no one to quench it in Bethel.

Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals.

“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?

When they finished eating the grass of the land, then I said, “Lord Yahweh, forgive, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”

Yahweh relented concerning this. “It shall not be,” says Yahweh.

Then I said, “Lord Yahweh, stop, I beg you! How could Jacob stand? For he is small.”

Yahweh relented concerning this. “This also shall not be,” says the Lord Yahweh.

I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.

So the ship master came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will notice us, so that we won’t perish.”

He said to them, “Take me up, and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will be calm for you; for I know that because of me this great storm is on you.”

Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed to Yahweh, his God, out of the fish’s belly.

I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’

The waters surrounded me, even to the soul. The deep was around me. The weeds were wrapped around my head.

Then Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land.

So Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to Yahweh’s word. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey across.

Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried out, and said, “In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”

The people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.

The news reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

He made a proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, “Let neither man nor animal, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water;

but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and animal, and let them cry mightily to God. Yes, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who knows whether God will not turn and relent, and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we might not perish?”

God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it.

He prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm.

Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much livestock?”

“All this is for the disobedience of Jacob, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the disobedience of Jacob? Isn’t it Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Aren’t they Jerusalem?

For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will howl like the jackals, and moan like the daughters of owls.

Don’t tell it in Gath. Don’t weep at all. At Beth Ophrah I have rolled myself in the dust.

But as for me, I am full of power by Yahweh’s Spirit, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Jacob his disobedience, and to Israel his sin.

I will cut off your engraved images and your pillars out from among you; and you shall no more worship the work of your hands.

My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me!

Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams? With tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my disobedience? The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of Ahab’s house. You walk in their counsels, that I may make you a ruin, and her inhabitants a hissing; And you will bear the reproach of my people.”

The nations will see and be ashamed of all their might. They will lay their hand on their mouth. Their ears will be deaf.

Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity, and passes over the disobedience of the remnant of his heritage? He doesn’t retain his anger forever, because he delights in loving kindness.

He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot; and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

those who have turned back from following Yahweh, and those who haven’t sought Yahweh nor inquired after him.

Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, you nation that has no shame,

before the appointed time when the day passes as the chaff, before the fierce anger of Yahweh comes on you, before the day of Yahweh’s anger comes on you.

She didn’t obey the voice. She didn’t receive correction. She didn’t trust in Yahweh. She didn’t draw near to her God.

I said, “Just fear me. Receive correction, so that her dwelling won’t be cut off, according to all that I have appointed concerning her.” But they rose early and corrupted all their doings.

In that day you will not be disappointed for all your doings, in which you have transgressed against me; for then I will take away out from among you your proudly exulting ones, and you will no more be haughty in my holy mountain.

“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies waste?

Now therefore this is what Yahweh of Armies says: Consider your ways.

“You looked for much, and, behold, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says Yahweh of Armies, “Because of my house that lies waste, while each of you is busy with his own house.

I struck you with blight, mildew, and hail in all the work of your hands; yet you didn’t turn to me,’ says Yahweh.

Therefore tell them: Yahweh of Armies says: ‘Return to me,’ says Yahweh of Armies, ‘and I will return to you,’ says Yahweh of Armies.

Don’t you be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed, saying: Yahweh of Armies says, ‘Return now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings;’ but they did not hear, nor listen to me, says Yahweh.

But my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, didn’t they overtake your fathers? “Then they repented and said, ‘Just as Yahweh of Armies determined to do to us, according to our ways, and according to our practices, so he has dealt with us.’”

Come! Come! Flee from the land of the north,’ says Yahweh; ‘for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the sky,’ says Yahweh.

For, behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes: behold, I will engrave its engraving,’ says Yahweh of Armies, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.

and to speak to the priests of the house of Yahweh of Armies, and to the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?”

“Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?

It has come to pass that, as he called, and they refused to listen, so they will call, and I will not listen,” said Yahweh of Armies;

For Yahweh of Armies says: “As I thought to do evil to you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and I didn’t repent;

I will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth; and he also will be a remnant for our God; and he will be as a chieftain in Judah, and Ekron as a Jebusite.

I will pour on David’s house, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for his firstborn.

In that day there will be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.

The land will mourn, every family apart; the family of David’s house apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart;

“In that day there will be a spring opened to David’s house and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.

It will happen in that day, that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision, when he prophesies; neither will they wear a hairy mantle to deceive:

I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, ‘It is my people;’ and they will say, ‘Yahweh is my God.’”

“Now, please entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With this, will he accept any of you?” says Yahweh of Armies.

“Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you,” says Yahweh of Armies, “neither will I accept an offering at your hand.

The law of truth was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many away from iniquity.

This again you do: you cover Yahweh’s altar with tears, with weeping, and with sighing, because he doesn’t regard the offering any more, neither receives it with good will at your hand.

Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to Yahweh, as in the days of old, and as in ancient years.

From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’