²³ So we fasted and entreated our God for this, and He ^(A)answered our prayer.

Keep Asking, Seeking, Knocking^(A)

^7 (B)“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ⁸ For ^(C)everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

The Return to Jerusalem

³¹ Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go to Jerusalem. And ^(A)the hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambush along the road.

¹² Now when he was in affliction, he implored the Lord his God, and ^(A)humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, ¹³ and prayed to Him; and He ^(B)received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh ^(C)knew that the Lord was God.

¹⁶ “Go, gather all the Jews who are present in ^[a]Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for ^(A)three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; ^(B)and if I perish, I perish!”

²⁰ And ^(A)they were helped against them, and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand, and all who were with them, for they ^(B)cried out to God in the battle. He ^[a]heeded their prayer, because they ^(C)put their trust in Him.

^29 (A)But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

^3 (A)Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.