13. “Your words have been stout against me,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’
14. You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God;’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts?
15. Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.’
16. Then those who feared the Lord spoke one with another; and the Lord listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared the Lord, and who honoured his name.
17. They shall be mine,” says the Lord of Hosts, “my own possession in the day that I make, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him.
18. Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn’t serve him.