“My people have perished for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being priest for Me. Since you have forgotten the Torah of your Elohim, I also forget your children.
“They slaughter on the mountaintops, and burn incense on the hills, under oak and poplars and terebinth, because its shade is good. Therefore your daughters commit whoring, and your brides commit adultery.
“And she shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and shall seek them but not find them. Then she shall say, ‘Let me go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now.’
“For their mother has whored, she who conceived them has acted shamelessly. For she said, ‘I go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’
“Therefore thus said the Master יהוה, ‘Because you have forgotten Me and cast Me behind your back, therefore you shall bear your wickedness and your whorings.’ ”
“In you they have taken a bribe to shed blood. You have taken interest and increase. You have cut off your neighbour by extortion. And you have forgotten Me,” declares the Master יהוה.
“But My people have forgotten Me, they have burned incense to what is false, and they have stumbled from their ways, from the ancient paths, to walk in bypaths and not on a highway,
Because you have forgotten the Elohim of your deliverance, and have not remembered the Rock of your stronghold, therefore you shall plant pleasant plants and set out foreign seedlings,
“And now, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. See, My Messenger goes before you. And in the day of My visitation I shall visit their sin upon them.”
your crookednesses and the crookednesses of your fathers together,” said יהוה, “who burned incense on the mountains and reproached Me on the hills. And I shall measure their former work into their bosom.”
The ways to Tsiyon mourn For no one comes to the appointed times. All her gates are deserted, Her priests sigh, her maidens are afflicted, And she has bitterness.
and shall turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation, and bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head, and shall make it like mourning for an only son, and its end like a day of bitterness.
