Thus says יהוה, “Where is the certificate of your mother’s divorce, whom I have put away? Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Look, you were sold for your crookednesses, and your mother was put away for your transgressions.
‘And the people to whom they are prophesying shall be thrown out in the streets of Yerushalayim because of the scarcity of food and the sword, with no one to bury them – them nor their wives, their sons nor their daughters. For I shall pour their evil on them.’
“Your own evil instructs you, and your backslidings reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter that you have forsaken יהוה your Elohim, and that My fear is not in you,” declares the Master יהוה of hosts.
“And it shall be, when they say, ‘Why does יהוה our Elohim do all this to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘As you have forsaken Me and served foreign mighty ones in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.’
“Hear, O earth! See, I am bringing evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not listened to My words, nor My Torah – and they rejected it.