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Unfaithful Israel

3If^* a man divorces his wife
   and she goes from him
and becomes another man’s wife,
   will he return to her?
Would not such a land be greatly polluted?
You have played the whore with many lovers;
   and would you return to me?

says the Lord.
² Look up to the bare heights,^* and see!
   Where have you not been lain with?
By the waysides you have sat waiting for lovers,
   like a nomad in the wilderness.
You have polluted the land
   with your whoring and wickedness.
³ Therefore the showers have been withheld,
   and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore,
   you refuse to be ashamed.
⁴ Have you not just now called to me,
   ‘My Father, you are the friend of my youth—
⁵ will he be angry for ever,
   will he be indignant to the end?’
This is how you have spoken,
   but you have done all the evil that you could.

A Call to Repentance

6 The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and played the whore there? ⁷And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me’; but she did not return, and her false sister Judah saw it. ⁸She^* saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. ⁹Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. ¹⁰Yet for all this her false sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but only in pretence, says the Lord.

11 Then the Lord said to me: Faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false Judah. ¹²Go, and proclaim these words towards the north, and say:
Return, faithless Israel,

says the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger,
   for I am merciful,

says the Lord;
I will not be angry for ever.
¹³ Only acknowledge your guilt,
   that you have rebelled against the Lord your God,
and scattered your favours among strangers under every green tree,
   and have not obeyed my voice,

says the Lord.
¹⁴ Return, O faithless children,

says the Lord,
   for I am your master;
I will take you, one from a city and two from a family,
   and I will bring you to Zion.