Don’t be like your fathers and brothers who were unfaithful to the Lord God of their ancestors, ¹  provoking him to destroy them, ²  as you can see.

Everyone who held the words of the God of Israel in awe ¹  gathered around me because of the unfaithful acts of the people of the exile. ²  Devastated, I continued to sit there until the evening offering.

Yet even after she had done all that, I thought that she might come back to me. ¹  But she did not. Her sister, unfaithful Judah, saw what she did. ² 

In spite of all this, ¹  Israel’s sister, unfaithful Judah, has not turned back to me with any sincerity; she has only pretended to do so,” ²  says the Lord.

(9:1) I wish I had a lodging place in the desert where I could spend some time like a weary traveler. ¹  Then I would desert my people and walk away from them because they are all unfaithful to God, a congregation ²  of people that has been disloyal to him. ³ 

Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, ¹  to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. ² 

No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. ¹  What did our ancestor ²  do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. ³ 

who leaves ¹  the husband ²  from her younger days, ³  and forgets her marriage covenant ⁴  made before God. ⁵ 

The righteousness of the upright will deliver them, ¹  but the faithless will be captured ²  by their own desires. ³ 

From the fruit of his speech ¹  a person eats good things, ²  but the faithless ³  desire ⁴  the fruit of violence. ⁵ 

The backslider ¹  will be paid back ²  from his own ways, but a good person will be rewarded ³  for his.

Indeed, they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race ¹  has become intermingled with the local residents. Worse still, the leaders and the officials have been at the forefront of all of this!”

The Annals of the Prophets include his prayer, give an account of how the Lord responded to it, record all his sins and unfaithful acts, and identify the sites where he built high places and erected Asherah poles and idols before he humbled himself. ¹ 

and had warned him about this very thing, so that he would not follow other gods. ¹  But he did not obey ²  the Lord’s command.

Should we then in your case hear that you do all this great evil, thereby being unfaithful to our God by marrying ¹  foreign wives?”

Then they will not be like their ancestors, who were a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that was not committed and faithful to God. ¹ 

I will not even consider doing what is dishonest. ¹  I hate doing evil; ²  I will have no part of it. ³ 

From earliest times our worship of that shameful god, Baal, has taken away ¹  all that our ancestors ²  worked for. It has taken away our flocks and our herds, and even our sons and daughters.

“Therefore, speak to the house of Israel, son of man, and tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: In this way too your fathers blasphemed me when they were unfaithful to me.

Their heart is slipping; soon they will be punished for their guilt. The Lord ¹  will break their altars; he will completely destroy their fertility pillars.