Further, you are to say to them, This is what the Lord has said: Will those who are falling not be lifted up again? will he who has gone away not come back?
Whatever prayer or request for your grace is made by any man, or by all your people Israel, whatever his trouble may be, whose hands are stretched out to this house:
Let the sinner give up his way, and the evil-doer his purpose: and let him come back to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for there is full forgiveness with him.
And in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a shocking thing; they are untrue to their wives, walking in deceit, and they make strong the hands of evil-doers, so that a man may not be turned back from his evil-doing: they have all become like Sodom to me, and its people like Gomorrah.
They say, If a man puts away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's, will he go back to her again? will not that land have been made unclean? but though you have been acting like a loose woman with a number of lovers, will you now come back to me? says the Lord.
Come back, you children who have been turned away, and I will take away your desire for wandering. See, we have come to you, for you are the Lord our God.
It may be that the people of Judah, hearing of all the evil which it is my purpose to do to them, will be turned, every man from his evil ways; so that they may have my forgiveness for their evil-doing and their sin.
If you will come back, O Israel, says the Lord, you will come back to me: and if you will put away your disgusting ways, you will not be sent away from before me.
The virgin of Israel has been made low, never again to be lifted up: she is stretched out by herself on her land; there is no one to put her on her feet again.