4. Have you not just now cried to Me: My Father, You were the guide and companion of my youth?
5. Will He retain His anger forever? Will He keep it to the end? Behold, you have so spoken, but you have done all the evil things you could and have had your way and have carried them through.
6. Moreover, the Lord said to me [Jeremiah] in the days of Josiah the king [of Judah], Have you seen what that faithless and backsliding Israel has done–how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree and there played the harlot?
7. And I said, After she has done all these things, she will return to Me; but she did not return, and her faithless and treacherous sister Judah saw it.
8. And I saw, even though [Judah knew] that for this very cause of committing adultery (idolatry) I [the Lord] had put faithless Israel away and given her a bill of divorce; yet her faithless and treacherous sister Judah was not afraid, but she also went and played the harlot [following after idols].
9. And through the infamy and unseemly frivolity of Israel's whoredom [because her immorality mattered little to her], she polluted and defiled the land, [by her idolatry] committing adultery with [idols of] stones and trees.
10. But in spite of all this, her faithless and treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me in sincerity and with her whole heart, but only in sheer hypocrisy [has she feigned obedience to King Josiah's reforms], says the Lord. [II Chron. 34:33; Hos. 7:13, 14.]
11. And the Lord said to me, Backsliding and faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false and treacherous Judah.