Alas, sinning nation, a people loaded with crookedness, a seed of evil-doers, sons acting corruptly! They have forsaken יהוה, they have provoked the Set-apart One of Yisra’ĕ
“I have said, ‘Only fear Me, accept instruction.’ And her dwelling would not be cut off, all that I have appointed for her. But they rose up early, they corrupted all their deeds.
“A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Yonah.” And He left them and went away.
And יהושע answering, said, “O generation, unbelieving and perverted, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.”
And seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his immersion, he said to them, “Brood of adders! Who has warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
“For I know that after my death you shall do very corruptly and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you. And evil shall come to you in the latter days, because you do what is evil in the eyes of יהוה, to provoke Him through the work of your hands.”
“When you bring forth children and grandchildren, and shall grow old in the land, and shall do corruptly and make a carved image in the form of whatever, and shall do what is evil in the eyes of יהוה your Elohim to provoke Him,
in order that you be blameless and faultless, children of Elohim without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,
And it came to be, when the ruler was dead, that they would turn back and do more corruptly than their fathers, to go after other mighty ones, to serve them and bow down to them. They did not refrain from their practices and from their stubborn way.