21. Yet I planted you as a choice vine, all of it a seed of trustworthiness. How then have you altered before me into something that is degenerate, the foreign vine?
22. For if you wash with natron, and you use much soap, your guilt is sticking as a stain before me,” declares the Lord Yahweh.
23. “How can you say, ‘I have not defiled myself, I have not gone after the Baals?’ Look at your way in the valley, know what you have done. You are a young she-camel, interweaving her ways.
24. A wild ass accustomed to the desert, in the desire of her soul. She gasps for wind in her rutting time. Who can quell her lust? All those who seek her will not grow weary, in her month they will find her.
25. Restrain your foot from being barefoot, and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is hopeless. No! For I have loved strangers, and after them I will go.’
26. As the shame of a thief when he is caught in the act, so the house of Israel will be ashamed. They, their kings, their officials, and their priests, and their prophets.
27. Those who say to the tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to the stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ For they have turned their backs to me, and not their faces. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us.’
28. But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in the time of your trouble. For according to the number of your towns are your gods, O Judah.
29. Why do you complain to me? All of you have rebelled against me,” declares Yahweh.
30. “For in vain I have struck your children. They accepted no discipline. Your sword devoured your prophets, like a ravening lion.
31. O generation, you see the word of Yahweh. Have I been a desert to Israel? Or a land of great darkness? Why do my people say, ‘We roam about freely, we will not come again to you’?
32. Can a young woman forget her ornaments? Or a bride her sashes? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
33. How well you do on your way to seek love! Therefore even to the wicked woman you can teach your ways.
34. Also on your skirts is found the blood of the life of the innocent, the poor. You did not find them in the act of breaking into a house. But in spite of all these things,
35. yet you say, ‘But I am innocent, surely his anger has turned away from me.’ Look, I am entering into judgment with you because of your saying, ‘I have not sinned.’