He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. Then the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and carried me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the idol that provokes jealousy was seated.

For the LORD your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers, which He swore to them by oath.

Then Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the foreign gods and Ashtoreths among you, prepare your hearts for the LORD, and serve Him only. And He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.”

Only this have I found: I have discovered that God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”

And there I saw the glory of the God of Israel, like the vision I had seen in the plain.

I will strengthen the house of Judah and save the house of Joseph. I will restore them because I have compassion on them, and they will be as though I had not rejected them. For I am the LORD their God, and I will answer them.

So Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the LORD, the God of Israel, and make a confession to Him. I urge you to tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.”

Indeed, ask now from one end of the heavens to the other about the days that long preceded you, from the day that God created man on earth: Has anything as great as this ever happened or been reported?

“It is true,” Achan replied, “I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I did:

Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking out of the fire, as you have, and lived?

Keep the king’s command, I say, because of your oath before God.

There they are, overwhelmed with dread, for God is in the company of the righteous.

I will firmly plant them in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land that I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

Or has any god tried to take as his own a nation out of another nation—by trials, signs, wonders, and war, by a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt, before your eyes?