Israel's Unfaithfulness Punished
1 Say to your brothers,
1"You are my people," and to your sisters,
2"You have received mercy."
2
"Plead with your mother, plead-- for
3she is not my wife, and I am not her husband-- that she put away
4her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts;
3
lest
5I strip her naked and make her as
6in the day she was born, and
7make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.
4
8Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
9because they are children of whoredom.
5
For
10their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For
11she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who
12give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'
6
Therefore
13I will hedge up her way with thorns, and
14I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths.
7
She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them.
15Then she shall say, 'I will go and return to
16my first husband,
17for it was better for me then than now.'
8
And
18she did not know that it was
19I who gave her
20the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on
21her silver and gold,
22which they used for Baal.
9
Therefore
23I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and
24I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness.
10
Now
25I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11
26And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her
27new moons, her
28Sabbaths, and all her
29appointed feasts.
12
And
30I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
31of which she said, 'These are
32my wages, which my lovers have given me.' I will make them a forest,
33and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13
And
34I will punish her for
35the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and
36adorned herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the LORD.