Jude 1:4
1:4 For certain men
have secretly slipped in among you
– men who long ago
were marked out
for the condemnation I am about to describe
– ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil
and who deny our only Master
and Lord,
Jesus Christ.
Ezra 9:1-4
A Prayer of Ezra
9:1 Now when these things had been completed, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the local residents who practice detestable things similar to those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
9:2 Indeed, they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has become intermingled with the local residents. Worse still, the leaders and the officials have been at the forefront of all of this!”
9:3 When I heard this report, I tore my tunic and my robe and ripped out some of the hair from my head and beard. Then I sat down, quite devastated.
9:4 Everyone who held the words of the God of Israel in awe gathered around me because of the unfaithful acts of the people of the exile. Devastated, I continued to sit there until the evening offering.
Ezra 10:6-9
10:6 Then Ezra got up from in front of the temple of God and went to the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. While he stayed
there, he did not eat food or drink water, for he was in mourning over the infidelity of the exiles.
10:7 A proclamation was circulated throughout Judah and Jerusalem that all the exiles were to be assembled in Jerusalem.
10:8 Everyone who did not come within three days would thereby forfeit all his property, in keeping with the counsel of the officials and the elders. Furthermore, he himself would be excluded from the assembly of the exiles.
10:9 All the men of Judah and Benjamin were gathered in Jerusalem within the three days. (It was in the ninth month, on the twentieth day of that month.) All the people sat in the square at the temple of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the rains.
Isaiah 22:12
22:12 At that time the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, called for weeping and mourning,
for shaved heads and sackcloth.
Ezekiel 9:4-6
9:4 The
Lord said to him, “Go through the city of Jerusalem
and put a mark
on the foreheads of the people who moan and groan over all the abominations practiced in it.”
9:5 While I listened, he said to the others, “Go through the city after him and strike people down; do no let your eye pity nor spare anyone!
9:6 Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women – wipe them out! But do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary!” So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple.
Joel 2:17
2:17 Let the priests, those who serve the Lord, weep
from the vestibule all the way back to the altar.
Let them say, “Have pity, O Lord, on your people;
please do not turn over your inheritance to be mocked,
to become a proverb among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
“Where is their God?”