But they put shame on the servants of God, making sport of his words and laughing at his prophets, till the wrath of God was moved against his people, till there was no help.
O nation full of sin, a people weighted down with crime, a generation of evil-doers, false-hearted children: they have gone away from the Lord, they have no respect for the Holy One of Israel, their hearts are turned back from him.
Will the axe say high-sounding words against him who is using it, or the blade be full of pride against him who is cutting with it? As if a rod had the power of shaking him who is using it, or as if a stick might take up him who is not wood.
Ho! uncontrolled children, says the Lord, who give effect to a purpose which is not mine, and who make an agreement, but not by my spirit, increasing their sin:
Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? and against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel.
Because your wrath against me and your pride have come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came.
Truly you had no word of them, no knowledge of them; no news of them in the past had come to your ears; because I saw how false was your behaviour, and that your heart was turned against me from your earliest days.
For every word I say is a cry for help; I say with a loud voice, Violent behaviour and wasting: because the word of the Lord is made a shame to me and a cause of laughing all the day.
O Israel, you have done evil from the days of Gibeah; there they took up their position, so that the fighting against the children of evil might not overtake them in Gibeah.
And they made a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and put a rod in his right hand, and they went down on their knees before him, and made sport of him, saying, Long life to the King of the Jews.
Do not be turned from the right way by foolish words; for because of these things the punishment of God comes on those who do not put themselves under him.
For the evil which overtakes them is the reward of their evil-doing: such men take their pleasure in the delights of the flesh even in the daytime; they are like the marks of a disease, like poisoned wounds among you, feasting together with you in joy;