³¹ When you offer your gifts—the sacrifice of your children^(A) in the fire—you continue to defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. Am I to let you inquire of me, you Israelites? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will not let you inquire of me.^(B)

²⁶ I defiled them through their gifts—the sacrifice^(A) of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.^(B)’

³¹ They have built the high places of Topheth^(A) in the Valley of Ben Hinnom^(B) to burn their sons and daughters^(C) in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.^(D)

Submit Yourselves to God

4 What causes fights and quarrels^(A) among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle^(B) within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill.^(C) You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive,^(D) because you ask with wrong motives,^(E) that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

¹¹ “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

¹² “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’^(A)

¹³ “‘When I called, they did not listen;^(A) so when they called, I would not listen,’^(B) says the Lord Almighty.^(C)

³ “Son of man, speak to the elders^(A) of Israel and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Have you come to inquire^(B) of me? As surely as I live, I will not let you inquire of me, declares the Sovereign Lord.^(C)’

²⁰ “‘And you took your sons and daughters^(A) whom you bore to me^(B) and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough?^(C)