And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

So the sons of Jacob did for him just as he had instructed them.

“These are the decisions that you will set before them:

when it happens that he sins and he is found guilty, then he must return whatever he had stolen, or whatever he had extorted, or the thing that he had held in trust, or the lost thing that he had found,

and in the desert, where you saw him carrying you along like a man carries his son. This he did everywhere you went until you came to this very place.”

The Lord then said to me, “What they have said is good.

You will go insane from seeing all this.

For we heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt and how you annihilated the two Amorite kings, Sihon and Og, on the other side of the Jordan.

His hair began to grow back after it had been shaved off.

When they return to you with all their heart and being in the land where they are held prisoner, and direct their prayers to you toward the land you gave to their ancestors, your chosen city, and the temple I built for your honor,

They rejected his rules, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the laws he had commanded them to obey. They paid allegiance to worthless idols, and so became worthless to the Lord. They copied the practices of the surrounding nations in blatant disregard of the Lord’s command.

the promise he made to Abraham, the promise he made by oath to Isaac!

When they return to you with all their heart and being in the land where they are held prisoner and direct their prayers toward the land you gave to their ancestors, your chosen city, and the temple I built for your honor,

and a letter for Asaph the keeper of the king’s nature preserve, so that he will give me timber for beams for the gates of the fortress adjacent to the temple and for the city wall and for the house to which I go.” So the king granted me these requests, for the good hand of my God was on me.

whose trust is in something futile, whose security is a spider’s web.

he who crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds for no reason.

what wise men declare, hiding nothing, from the tradition of their ancestors,

You, whose garments are hot when the earth is still because of the south wind,

to whom I appointed the steppe for its home, the salt wastes as its dwelling place?

who are always ready to do wrong or offer a bribe.