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restored the glory of your Temple, rebuilt the city of Jerusalem out of its ruins, and gave us a place of security here in Judah and Jerusalem.
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"But now, Lord, what can we say, after you have done all this for us? We have again disobeyed the commands that you gave us through your servants, the prophets. They told us that
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the land we were to occupy was an impure land because the heathen people who lived in it filled it with their disgusting deeds.
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They told us that we should never intermarry with those people
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and never seek peaceful relations with them if we wanted to be strong and enjoy the land and pass it on to our descendants forever.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.