The residents of Samaria will have anxiety over the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its idolatrous priests rejoiced over it; the people will mourn over it, over its glory. It will certainly go into exile.
Your adulteries and your lustful neighing, your depraved prostitution on the hills, in the fields – I have seen your abhorrent acts. Woe to you, Jerusalem! You are unclean – for how long yet?
‘Come, gather together, and approach, you fugitives of the nations. Those who carry their wooden idols and pray to a god who cannot save have no knowledge.
For fire has been kindled because of my anger and burns to the depths of Sheol; it devours the land and its produce, and scorches the foundations of the mountains.
Now they continue to sin and make themselves a cast image, idols skilfully made from their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. People say about them, ‘Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves.’
Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, ‘As your god lives, Dan,’ or, ‘As the way , of Beer-sheba lives’ – they will fall, never to rise again.
‘And now you are saying you can assert yourselves against the Lord’s kingdom, which is in the hand of one of David’s sons. You are a vast number and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made for you as gods. ,
The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed; thorns and thistles will grow over their altars. They will say to the mountains, ‘Cover us! ’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us! ’
All her carved images will be smashed to pieces; all her wages will be burned in the fire, and I will destroy all her idols. Since she collected the wages of a prostitute, they will be used again for a prostitute.