1. The Lord said to the people of Israel:If a divorced woman marries,can her first husbandever marry her again?No, because thiswould pollute the land.But you have more godsthan a prostitute has lovers.Why should I take you back?
2. Just try to find one hilltopwhere you haven't goneto worship other godsby having sex.You sat beside the roadlike a robber in ambush,except you offered yourselfto every passer-by.Your sins of unfaithfulnesshave polluted the land.
3. So I, the Lord, refusedto let the spring rains fall.But just like a prostitute,you still have no shamefor what you have done.
4. You call me your fatheror your long-lost friend;
5. you beg me to stop being angry,but you won't stop sinning.
6. When Josiah was king, the Lord said:Jeremiah, the kingdom of Israel was like an unfaithful wife who became a prostitute on the hilltops and in the shade of large trees.
7-8. I knew that the kingdom of Israel had been unfaithful and committed many sins, yet I still hoped she might come back to me. But she didn't, so I divorced her and sent her away.Her sister, the kingdom of Judah, saw what happened, but she wasn't worried in the least, and I watched her become unfaithful like her sister.
9. The kingdom of Judah wasn't sorry for being a prostitute, and she didn't care that she had made both herself and the land unclean by worshipping idols of stone and wood.