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God Challenges Israel

6Hear what the Lord says:
   Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
   and let the hills hear your voice.
² Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
   and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
   and he will contend with Israel.

³ ‘O my people, what have I done to you?
   In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
⁴ For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
   and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
   Aaron, and Miriam.

What God Requires

⁶ ‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
   and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
   with calves a year old?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
   with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
   the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God?

⁵ ‘Gather to me my faithful ones,
   who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!’
⁶ The heavens declare his righteousness,
   for God himself is judge.
          Selah

⁸ Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;
   your burnt-offerings are continually before me.
⁹ I will not accept a bull from your house,
   or goats from your folds.
¹⁶ But to the wicked God says:
   ‘What right have you to recite my statutes,
   or take my covenant on your lips?
¹⁷ For you hate discipline,
   and you cast my words behind you.
²¹ These things you have done and I have been silent;
   you thought that I was one just like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

²³ Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honour me;
   to those who go the right way^*
   I will show the salvation of God.’

The Sign of Jonah

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ ³⁹But he answered them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here! ⁴²The queen of the South will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!