³¹ For when you offer gifts to them and give your little children to be burned as sacrifices,^[a] you continue to pollute yourselves with idols to this day. Should I allow you to ask for a message from me, O people of Israel? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will tell you nothing.

²⁶ I let them pollute themselves^[a] with the very gifts I had given them, and I allowed them to give their firstborn children as offerings to their gods—so I might devastate them and remind them that I alone am the Lord.

³¹ They have built pagan shrines at Topheth, the garbage dump in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and there they burn their sons and daughters in the fire. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing!

Drawing Close to God

4 What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? ² You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. ³ And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

¹¹ Later, when the other five bridesmaids returned, they stood outside, calling, ‘Lord! Lord! Open the door for us!’

¹² “But he called back, ‘Believe me, I don’t know you!’

¹³ “Since they refused to listen when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

³ “Son of man, tell the leaders of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: How dare you come to ask me for a message? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will tell you nothing!’

²⁰ “Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough?

³ “Son of man, these leaders have set up idols^[a] in their hearts. They have embraced things that will make them fall into sin. Why should I listen to their requests? ⁴ Tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: The people of Israel have set up idols in their hearts and fallen into sin, and then they go to a prophet asking for a message. So I, the Lord, will give them the kind of answer their great idolatry deserves.