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³¹ And you, O generation, behold the word of the Lord!^*
Have I been a wilderness to Israel,
   or a land of thick darkness?
Why then do my people say, ‘We are free,
   we will come to you no more’?
³² Can a girl forget her ornaments,
   or a bride her attire?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
   days without number.

³³ How well you direct your course
   to seek lovers!
So that even to wicked women
   you have taught your ways.
³⁴ Also on your skirts is found
   the lifeblood of the innocent poor,
though you did not catch them breaking in.
   Yet in spite of all these things^*
35 you say, ‘I am innocent;
   surely his anger has turned from me.’
Now I am bringing you to judgement
   for saying, ‘I have not sinned.’
³⁶ How lightly you gad about,
   changing your ways!
You shall be put to shame by Egypt
   as you were put to shame by Assyria.
³⁷ From there also you will come away
   with your hands on your head;
for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust,
   and you will not prosper through them.

The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation

⁴ You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When people fall, do they not get up again?
   If they go astray, do they not turn back?
⁵ Why then has this people^* turned away
   in perpetual backsliding?
They have held fast to deceit,
   they have refused to return.
⁶ I have given heed and listened,
   but they do not speak honestly;
no one repents of wickedness,
   saying, ‘What have I done!’
All of them turn to their own course,
   like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
⁷ Even the stork in the heavens
   knows its times;
and the turtle-dove, swallow, and crane^*
   observe the time of their coming;
but my people do not know
   the ordinance of the Lord.

The Prophet Mourns for the People

¹⁸ My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
   my heart is sick.
¹⁹ Hark, the cry of my poor people
   from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
   Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
   with their foreign idols?’)
²⁰ ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
   and we are not saved.’
²¹ For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
   I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

²² Is there no balm in Gilead?
   Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
   not been restored?

9^*O that my head were a spring of water,
   and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
   for the slain of my poor people!
^{2 *}O that I had in the desert
   a traveller’s lodging-place,
that I might leave my people
   and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
   a band of traitors.
³ They bend their tongues like bows;
   they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
   and they do not know me, says the Lord.