Elijah approached all the people and said, “How long will you straddle the issue? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” But the people did not answer him.
Trample my courts no more! To bring offerings is useless; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath, calling assemblies— festive convocations with wickedness— these I cannot bear.
They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the judgment of their God; They ask of me just judgments, they desire to draw near to God.
I will pronounce my sentence against them for all their wickedness in forsaking me, In burning incense to other gods, in bowing down to the works of their hands.
The Lord of hosts who planted you has decreed disaster for you because of the evil done by the house of Israel and by the house of Judah, who provoked me by sacrificing to Baal. The Plot Against Jeremiah.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and follow other gods, serving and worshiping them, will be like this loincloth, good for nothing.
Yet my people have forgotten me: they offer incense in vain. They stumble off their paths, the ways of old, Traveling on bypaths, not the beaten track.
All because they have forsaken me and profaned this place by burning incense to other gods which neither they nor their ancestors knew; and because the kings of Judah have filled this place with innocent blood,
The Chaldeans who are attacking this city shall go in and set the city on fire, burning it and the houses, on whose roofs incense was burned to Baal and libations were poured out to other gods in order to provoke me.
because of the evil they did to provoke me, going after other gods, offering incense and serving other gods they did not know, neither they, nor you, nor your ancestors.
Why do you provoke me with the works of your hands, offering sacrifice to other gods here in the land of Egypt where you have come to live? Will you cut yourselves off and become a curse, a reproach among all the nations of the earth?
Have you forgotten the evil of your ancestors, the evil of the kings of Judah, the evil of their wives, and your own evil and the evil of your wives—all that they did in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
Why should I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me, they swear by gods that are no gods. I fed them, but they commit adultery; to the prostitute’s house they throng.
if you no longer oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow after other gods to your own harm,
Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Will you defile yourselves in the way your ancestors did? Will you lust after their detestable idols?
Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your atrocities and all your abominations, I will surely withdraw and not look upon you with pity nor spare you.
Burn leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, proclaim publicly your voluntary offerings, For so you love to do, Israelites— oracle of the Lord God.
I will draw near to you for judgment, and I will be swift to bear witness Against sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers, those who deprive a laborer of wages, Oppress a widow or an orphan, or turn aside a resident alien, without fearing me, says the Lord of hosts.
But as for cowards, the unfaithful, the depraved, murderers, the unchaste, sorcerers, idol-worshipers, and deceivers of every sort, their lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” The New Jerusalem.