A voice on the bare heights is heard, the plaintive weeping of Israel’s children, because they have perverted their way; they have forgotten the Lord their God:
For you have forgotten God your Savior and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge; therefore, though you plant pleasant gardens and set out branches of a foreign god,
Whom did you dread and fear so that you lied and did not remember me or give me a thought? Have I not kept silent and closed my eyes, and so you do not fear me?
Upon all the bare heights in the desert, spoilers have come, for the sword of the Lord devours from one end of the land to the other; no one shall be safe.
But my people have forgotten me; they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway,
Look up to the bare heights and see! Where have you not been lain with? By the waysides you sat waiting for lovers, like a nomad in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitutions and wickedness.
With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back; I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path where they shall not stumble, for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
Cut off your hair and throw it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation that provoked his wrath.
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, therefore bear the consequences of your lewdness and prostitutions.
Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities, but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds.
The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary because your way is perverse before me.