The Jews, living in sin and unwilling to accept the healing power of repentance, approached the Lord not with the intent to obey His commandments but to see if His divine answers aligned with their own desires. This echoed the experience of Zedekiah, who asked Jeremiah for God’s preferences, only to act against what he learned. Similarly, those who ventured to Egypt after the exile demonstrated this same defiance. For this reason, the Almighty does not wish to respond to them; as the Holy Gospel teaches, He understands what is in the hearts of men (1 Cor. 2:11). Thus, the Prophet is commanded to disregard them and not to pray on their behalf; this notion is expressed by the Lord when He says, if you seek their justice, O son of man, meaning to not engage with them in a trustee manner or accept their inquiries. Instead, you must declare the sins of their forefathers. The Lord declares: From this day forward, Israel has been chosen and led away to the seed of Jacob, known to them while in Egypt. He took hold of their hand, stating: I am the Lord your God. On that day, He will raise His hand to bring them out of Egypt, into the land He has prepared for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, which is superior to all other lands. To those who have come to you, O Prophet, proclaim My blessings, recount the sins of their ancestors, and remind them how I revealed Myself to their forefathers in Egypt, before they honored and served the idols of Egypt, teaching them that I am both God and Lord. He conveys these truths to liberate them from bondage, fulfill His promises, and grant them the promised land, a source of countless blessings, yielding diverse fruits for its inhabitants, a land of such goodness that one might say it is the best of all the earth, aptly described as the product of bees; for He expressed this by stating that the honeycomb surpasses all the earth, calling it honeycomb sweet and delightful.
THEOSIS