Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among them and participated in the richness of the olive root,
When its branches get brittle, they break; women come and use them for kindling. For these people lack understanding, therefore the one who made them has no compassion on them; the one who formed them has no mercy on them.
Even if only a tenth of the people remain in the land, it will again be destroyed, like one of the large sacred trees or an Asherah pole, when a sacred pillar on a high place is thrown down. That sacred pillar symbolizes the special chosen family.”
I, the Lord, once called you a thriving olive tree, one that produced beautiful fruit. But I will set you on fire, fire that will blaze with a mighty roar. Then all your branches will be good for nothing.
If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up.
For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree?
And even though you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he nevertheless made you alive with him, having forgiven all your transgressions.