but instead there was joy and festivity, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating meat and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Indeed, I heard Ephraim pleading: “You disciplined me, and I took the discipline; I was like an untrained calf. Bring me back; let me come back, for you are the Lord my God.
O Lord, do your eyes not look for truth? You have struck them, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to turn back.
All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, ‘We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways’ (thus sweeping away the moist with the dry)—