5. Will you always be angry at me?Will your anger last forever?’Judah, you said this,but you did as much evil as you could!”
6. When King Josiah was ruling Judah, the Lord said to me, “Did you see what unfaithful Israel did? She was like a prostitute with her idols on every hill and under every green tree.
7. I said to myself, ‘Israel will come back to me after she does this evil,’ but she didn’t come back. And Israel’s wicked sister Judah saw what she did.
8. Judah saw that I divorced unfaithful Israel because of her adultery, but that didn’t make Israel’s wicked sister Judah afraid. She also went out and acted like a prostitute!
9. And she didn’t care that she was acting like a prostitute. So she made her country unclean and was guilty of adultery, because she worshiped idols made of stone and wood.
10. Israel’s wicked sister didn’t even come back to me with her whole heart, but only pretended,” says the Lord.
11. The Lord said to me, “Unfaithful Israel had a better excuse than wicked Judah.