16. They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger.
17. They sacrificed to demons, not to God–to gods whom they knew not, to new gods lately come up, whom your fathers never knew or feared.
18. Of the Rock Who bore you you were unmindful; you forgot the God Who travailed in your birth.
19. And the Lord saw it and He spurned and rejected them, out of indignation with His sons and His daughters.
20. And He said, I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.
21. They have moved Me to jealousy with what is not God; they have angered Me with their idols. So I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people; I will anger them with a foolish nation.
22. For a fire is kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth with its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23. And I will heap evils upon them; I will spend My arrows upon them.
24. They shall be wasted with hunger and devoured with burning heat and poisonous pestilence; and the teeth of beasts will I send against them, with the poison of crawling things of the dust.
25. From without the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers shall be terror, destroying both young man and virgin, the sucking child with the man of gray hairs.
26. I said, I would scatter them afar and I would have made the remembrance of them to cease from among men,
27. Had I not feared the provocation of the foe, lest their enemies misconstrue it and lest they should say, Our own hand has prevailed; all this was not the work of the Lord.
28. For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them.