“Indeed, long ago I broke your yoke and tore off your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve!’ Instead, on every high hill and under every green tree you sprawled out as a prostitute.
Then Jeroboam instituted a festival in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, imitating the Festival that is in Judah. He went up to the altar that he built in Bethel, to sacrifice to the calves that he had made. He installed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he made.
So Moses came and told the people all the words of Adonai as well as all the ordinances. All the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which Adonai has spoken, we will do.”
So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, to bring them up out of that land into a good and large land, a land flowing with milk and honey, into the place of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
Your adulteries, your lustful neighings, the lewdness of your prostitution— on the hills in the field I have seen your loathsome acts. Oy you, Jerusalem! You are unclean! How much longer?”
You, generation, heed Adonai’s word! “Have I been a wilderness to Israel or a land of thick darkness? Why do My people say, ‘We are free to roam. We won’t come to You any more’?
Only acknowledge your iniquity. For you sinned against Adonai your God and scattered your favors to foreign gods under every green tree. You have not obeyed My voice.” It is a declaration of Adonai.
It will be in that day” —it is a declaration of Adonai-Tzva’ot— “that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and will tear off your bonds. Foreigners will no longer enslave him.
I will go to the distinguished and speak to them. Surely they know the way of Adonai, the ordinance of their God. But they too had broken the yoke and torn off the bonds.
when you build your mound at the head of every road and make your high place in every street. Yet you were not like a harlot, since you scoffed at receiving payment.
They will set your houses on fire and execute judgment on you in the sight of many women. So I will cause you to stop your harlotry. You will never again pay for a lover.
When I brought them into the land, which I lifted up My hand to give to them, they saw every high hill and every leafy tree. There they slaughtered their sacrifices and presented their offensive offering. There they made their soothing aroma and poured out their drink offerings.
When Adonai first spoke with Hosea, Adonai said to Hosea: “Go, get yourself a prostitute as a wife and children with a prostitute! For the land is an unfaithful prostitute, far from following after Adonai.”
Or else I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day she was born. Then I will make her like a wilderness. Yes, I will make her like desert land, and I will let her die of thirst.
Then I said to her: “For many days you must stay with me. You must not practice prostitution. You must not have a man, and I will be the same toward you.”
They sacrifice on the mountaintops and on the high places they burn incense under oak poplar, and terebinth— for its shade is good. Therefore your daughters are prostitutes and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.
Do not rejoice, O Israel, do not celebrate like the peoples— for so you have gone whoring away from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s pay, on every grain-threshing-floor.
I am Adonai your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, so that you would not be their slaves, and I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.
You must utterly destroy all the places where the nations that you will dispossess served their gods—on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.
Or has any god ever tried to come to take for himself a nation from within a nation—by trials, by signs and wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—like all that Adonai your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
Then Joshua wrote these words in the scroll of the Torah of God. Also he took a great stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the Sanctuary of Adonai.
Then one of the seven angels holding the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the sentencing of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.
Then Bnei-Yisrael again did what was evil in Adonai’s eyes. They worshipped the Baalim, the Ashtaroth, gods of Aram, gods of Zidon, gods of Moab, gods of the children of Ammon and gods of the Philistines. They abandoned Adonai and did not worship Him.
So they cried out to Adonai and said, ‘We have sinned because we have forsaken Adonai and have worshipped the Baalim and the Ashtaroth. But now deliver us from the hand of our enemies and we will worship You.’