I will not punish your daughters when they commit prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery. For the men consort with harlots, they sacrifice with temple prostitutes. It is true: ¹  “A people that lacks understanding will come to ruin!”

“‘The person who turns to the spirits of the dead and familiar spirits ²  to commit prostitution by going after them, I will set my face ³  against that person and cut him off from the midst of his people.

At the head of every street you erected your pavilion and you disgraced ¹  your beauty when you spread ²  your legs to every passerby and multiplied your promiscuity.

You were different from other prostitutes ¹  because no one solicited you. When you gave payment and no payment was given to you, you became the opposite!

“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Will you defile yourselves like your fathers ¹  and engage in prostitution with detestable idols?

Then I told her, “You must live with me many days; you must not commit adultery or have sexual intercourse with ¹  another man, and I also will wait for you.”

Their wicked deeds do not allow them to return to their God; because a spirit of idolatry ¹  controls their heart, ²  and they do not acknowledge the Lord.

He said to me: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne ¹  and the place for the soles of my feet, ²  where I will live among the people of Israel forever. The house of Israel will no longer profane my holy name, neither they nor their kings, by their spiritual prostitution or by the pillars of their kings set up when they die. ³ 

She also saw ¹  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ²  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ³  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ⁴ 

“‘Because you did not remember the days of your youth and have enraged me with all these deeds, I hereby repay you for what you have done, ¹  declares the sovereign Lord. Have you not engaged in prostitution on top of all your other abominable practices?

I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said, “These are my wages for prostitution ¹  that my lovers gave to me!” I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees ²  into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals ³  will devour them.

All her carved idols will be smashed to pieces; all her metal cult statues will be destroyed by fire. ¹  I will make a waste heap ²  of all her images. Since ³  she gathered the metal ⁴  as a prostitute collects her wages, the idols will become a prostitute’s wages again.” ⁵