Thus said Jehovah: `Where `is' this -- the bill of your mother's divorce, Whom I sent away? Or to which of My creditors have I sold you? Lo, for your iniquities ye have been sold, And for your transgressions Hath your mother been sent away.
Its widows have been more to Me than the sand of the seas, I brought in to them -- against the mother -- A young man -- a spoiler -- at noon. I caused to fall upon her suddenly, wrath and trouble.
In reference to the prophets: Broken hath been my heart in my midst, Fluttered have all my bones, I have been as a man -- a drunkard, And as a man -- wine hath passed over him, Because of Jehovah, and of His holy words.
Ashamed hath been your mother greatly, Confounded hath she been that bare you, Lo, the hindermost of nations `is' a wilderness, A dry land, and a desert.
`Son of man, these men have caused their idols to go up on their heart, and the stumbling-block of their iniquity they have put over-against their faces; am I inquired of at all by them?
Plead ye with your mother -- plead, (For she `is' not My wife, and I `am' not her husband,) And she turneth her whoredoms from before her, And her adulteries from between her breasts,
For gone a-whoring hath their mother, Acted shamefully hath their conceiver, For she hath said, I go after my lovers, Those giving my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
And it hath come to pass, in that day, An affirmation of Jehovah of Hosts, I cut off the names of the idols from the land, And they are not remembered any more, And also the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness I cause to pass away from the land.