You are an unfaithful daughter. How long will you wander before you come home? The Lord has made something new happen in the land: A woman will go seeking a man.”
I will make you and the woman enemies to each other. Your descendants and her descendants will be enemies. One of her descendants will crush your head, and you will bite his heel.”
I have seen the terrible things you have done: your acts of adultery and your snorting, your prostitution, your hateful acts on the hills and in the fields. How terrible it will be for you, Jerusalem. How long will you continue being unclean?”
We know that we suffer because of our sins. Lord, do something to help us for the good of your name. We have left you many times; we have sinned against you.
“How can you say to me, ‘I am not guilty. I have not worshiped the Baal idols’? Look at the things you did in the valley. Think about what you have done. You are like a she-camel in mating season that runs from place to place.
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should her first husband come back to her again? If he went back to her, wouldn’t the land become completely unclean? But you have acted like a prostitute with many lovers, and now you want to come back to me?” says the Lord.
“Come back to me, you unfaithful children,” says the Lord, “because I am your master. I will take one person from every city and two from every family group, and I will bring you to Jerusalem.
When King Josiah was ruling Judah, the Lord said to me, “Did you see what unfaithful Israel did? She was like a prostitute with her idols on every hill and under every green tree.
Judah saw that I divorced unfaithful Israel because of her adultery, but that didn’t make Israel’s wicked sister Judah afraid. She also went out and acted like a prostitute!
You brag about your valleys and about the fruit in your valleys. You are like an unfaithful child who believes his treasures will save him. You think, ‘Who would attack me?’
But your ancestors did not listen or pay attention to me. They were stubborn and did whatever their evil hearts wanted. They went backward, not forward.
But if the Lord does something new, you will know they have insulted the Lord. The ground will open and swallow them. They will be buried alive and will go to the place of the dead, and everything that belongs to them will go with them.”