⁴⁴ “Behold, everyone ^(A)who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’

² “What do you^[a] mean ^(A)by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ^(B)‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’? ^3 (C)As I live, declares the Lord God, ^(D)this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.

Ezra Prays About Intermarriage

9 After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the ^(A)Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands ^(B)with their abominations, from the ^(C)Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.

¹³ As the proverb of the ancients says, ‘Out of the wicked comes wickedness.’ But my hand shall not be against you.

⁴⁵ You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of ^(A)your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. ^(B)Your mother was a Hittite and ^(C)your father an Amorite.

³ and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an ^(A)Amorite and your mother a ^(B)Hittite.

⁹ But they did not listen, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.

¹⁵ They despised his statutes ^(A)and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after ^(B)false idols ^(C)and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the ^(D)Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them.