Jeremiah 3:1–9

¹“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says the LORD.↗

²“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness.↗

³Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain; yet you have had a prostitute’s forehead and you refused to be ashamed.↗

⁴Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth!’?↗

⁵“‘Will he retain his anger forever? Will he keep it to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken and have done evil things, and have had your way.”↗

⁶Moreover, the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and has played the prostitute there.↗

⁷I said after she had done all these things, ‘She will return to me;’ but she didn’t return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it.↗

⁸I saw when, for this very cause, that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet treacherous Judah, her sister, had no fear, but she also went and played the prostitute.↗

⁹Because she took her prostitution lightly, the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with wood.↗