Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear! I remember the devotion of your youth, how you loved me as a bride, Following me in the wilderness, in a land unsown.
They did not ask, “Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, Who led us through the wilderness, through a land of wastes and ravines, A land of drought and darkness, a land which no one crosses, where no one dwells?”
Like grapes in the desert, I found Israel; Like the first fruits of the fig tree, its first to ripen, I looked on your ancestors. But when they came to Baal-peor and consecrated themselves to the Shameful One, they became as abhorrent as the thing they loved.
but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and destitute elemental powers? Do you want to be slaves to them all over again?
Surely, the Lord, your God, has blessed you in all your undertakings; he has been concerned about your journey through this vast wilderness. It is now forty years that the Lord, your God, has been with you, and you have lacked nothing.
he guided you through the vast and terrible wilderness with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; he brought forth water for you from the flinty rock