Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them! For they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
You are righteous, LORD, when I contend with you; yet I would like to plead a case with you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are they all at ease who deal very treacherously?
For even your brothers, and the house of your father, even they have dealt treacherously with you! Even they have cried aloud after you! Don’t believe them, though they speak beautiful words to you.
If you say in your heart, “Why have these things come on me?” Your skirts are uncovered because of the greatness of your iniquity, and your heels suffer violence.
“For the land is full of adulterers; for because of the curse the land mourns. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is not right;
“For my people are foolish. They don’t know me. They are foolish children, and they have no understanding. They are skilful in doing evil, but they don’t know how to do good.”
“Run back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in its wide places, if you can find a man, if there is anyone who does justly, who seeks truth, then I will pardon her.
Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.
Yet you say, ‘Why?’ Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and the wife of your covenant.
You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
After all that generation were gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who didn’t know the LORD, nor the work which he had done for Israel.