¹⁸ Consider from this day on, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider:^{(A) 19} Is there any seed left in the barn? Do the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still yield nothing? From this day on I will bless you.”

⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared.

²⁸ Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die.

¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.

¹⁷ But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;

¹⁵ But now, consider what will come to pass from this day on. Before a stone was placed upon a stone in the Lord’s temple,^(A)

¹⁶ “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.^{(A) 17} Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food and prospered and saw no misfortune.^(B)