^7 (A)Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see.

⁸ Therefore ^(A)the wrath of the Lord came on Judah and Jerusalem, and he has made them ^(B)an object of horror, of astonishment, ^(C)and of hissing, as you see with your own eyes.

³ Therefore say to them, Thus declares the Lord of hosts: ^(A)Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and ^(B)I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. ^4 (C)Do not be like your fathers, ^(D)to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, ^(E)Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But ^(F)they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the Lord.

^13 (A)But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. ^(B)They did not walk in my statutes but rejected my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; ^(C)and my Sabbaths they greatly profaned.

^(D)“Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them in the wilderness, to make a full end of them. ¹⁴ But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, ^(E)in whose sight I had brought them out. ¹⁵ Moreover, ^(F)I swore to them in the wilderness ^(G)that I would not bring them into the land that I had given them, a land ^(H)flowing with milk and honey, ^(I)the most glorious of all lands, ¹⁶ because they rejected my rules and did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my Sabbaths; ^(J)for their heart went after their idols. ¹⁷ Nevertheless, ^(K)my eye spared them, and I did not destroy them or ^(L)make a full end of them in the wilderness.

¹⁸ “And I said to ^(M)their children in the wilderness, ‘Do not walk ^(N)in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, ^(O)nor defile yourselves with their idols.