Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all who followed Baal of Peor.

Why has the wicked man renounced God? He says to himself, “You will never call me to account.”

Later, I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was confined to his house. He said: “Let us meet at the house of God inside the temple. Let us shut the temple doors because they are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you!”

So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and asked, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” “It must be moved to Gath,” they replied. So they carried away the ark of the God of Israel.

Then I said, “They are only the poor; they have played the fool, for they do not know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.

But you who held fast to the LORD your God are alive to this day, every one of you.

So they sent the ark of God to Ekron, but as it arrived, the Ekronites cried out, “They have brought us the ark of the God of Israel in order to kill us and our people!”

I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.

I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had uttered this prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.

Listen, O kings! Give ear, O princes! I will sing to the LORD; I will sing praise to the LORD, the God of Israel.

See, I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as the LORD my God has commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land that you are about to enter and possess.