⁷ You are to strike down the house of your master Ahab so that I may avenge the blood shed by the hand of Jezebel—the blood of my servants the prophets and of all the servants of the Lord.^(A)

²³ Finally, the Lord removed Israel from his presence just as he had declared through all his servants the prophets. So Israel has been exiled to Assyria from their homeland to this very day.^(A)

¹⁷ “‘This is what the Lord God says: Are you the one I spoke about in former times through my servants, the prophets of Israel, who for years prophesied in those times that I would bring you against them?

⁶ But didn’t my words and my statutes that I commanded my servants the prophets overtake your ancestors?’”

So the people repented and said, “As the Lord of Armies decided to deal with us for our ways and our deeds, so he has dealt with us.”^(A)

¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy,^(A) but now you have received mercy.

A Call to Good Works

¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles^(B) to abstain^(C) from sinful^(D) desires that wage war against the soul.^{(E) 12} Conduct^(F) yourselves honorably among the Gentiles,^[a] so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.^(G)