Only acknowledge your guilt – you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favours to strangers under every green tree and have not obeyed me. This is the Lord’s declaration.
But this is a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in holes or imprisoned in dungeons. They have become plunder with no one to rescue them and loot, with no one saying, ‘Give it back! ’
Who gave Jacob to the robber, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the Lord? Have we not sinned against him? They were not willing to walk in his ways, and they would not listen to his instruction.
Who is the person wise enough to understand this? Who has the Lord spoken to, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a wilderness, so that no one can pass through?