Israel, do not rejoice jubilantly as the nations do, for you have acted promiscuously, leaving your God. You love the wages of a prostitute on every grain threshing-floor.
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.
My people consult their wooden idols, and their divining rods inform them. For a spirit of promiscuity leads them astray; they act promiscuously in disobedience to their God.
Instead, we will do everything we promised: we will burn incense to the queen of heaven and offer drink offerings to her just as we, our ancestors, our kings, and our officials did in Judah’s cities and in Jerusalem’s streets. Then we had enough food, we were well off, and we saw no disaster,
I will devastate her vines and fig trees. She thinks that these are her wages that her lovers have given her. I will turn them into a thicket, and the wild animals will eat them.
On the day that you plant, you will help them to grow, and in the morning you will help your seed to sprout, but the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.
I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a bitter day.
Offer leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do! This is the declaration of the Lord God.
Your own evil will discipline you; your own apostasies will reprimand you. Recognise how evil and bitter it is for you to abandon the Lord your God and to have no fear of me. This is the declaration of the Lord God of Armies.
For long ago I broke your yoke; I tore off your chains. You insisted, ‘I will not serve! ’ On every high hill and under every green tree you lay down like a prostitute.
‘ “But you trusted in your beauty and acted like a prostitute because of your fame. You lavished your sexual favours on everyone who passed by. Your beauty became his.