21. Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a pure and faithful seed. How then have you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me?
22. For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me,” says the Lord Yahweh.
23. “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled. I have not gone after the Baals’? See your way in the valley. Know what you have done. You are a swift dromedary traversing her ways;
24. a wild donkey used to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her craving. When she is in heat, who can turn her away? All those who seek her will not weary themselves. In her month, they will find her.
25. “Keep your feet from being bare, and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is in vain. No, for I have loved strangers, and I will go after them.’
26. As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets;
27. who tell wood, ‘You are my father;’ and a stone, ‘You have given birth to me:’ for they have turned their back to me, and not their face; but in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise, and save us.’
28. “But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble: for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah.
29. “Why will you contend with me? You all have transgressed against me,” says Yahweh.
30. “I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.