Woe to a sinful nation, a people burdened by iniquity, a wicked offspring, accursed children. They have abandoned the Lord. They have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel. They been taken away backwards.
I am the Lord, who examines the heart and tests the temperament, who gives to each one according to his way and according to the fruit of his own decisions.
Thus says the Lord: "What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they would draw far away from me, and would walk after emptiness, and would become empty?
And since they did not prove to have God by knowledge, God handed them over to a morally depraved way of thinking, so that they might do those things which are not fitting:
having their intellect obscured, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is within them, because of the blindness of their hearts.