Add parallel Print Page Options

You who burn with lust among the oaks,
    under every green tree;
You who immolate children in the wadies,
    among the clefts of the rocks?[a](A)
Among the smooth stones[b] of the wadi is your portion,
    they, they are your allotment;
Indeed, you poured out a drink offering to them,
    and brought up grain offerings.
    With these things, should I be appeased?
Upon a towering and lofty mountain
    you set up your bed,
    and there you went up to offer sacrifice.(B)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 57:5 Child sacrifice is also attested in 2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 7:31; Ez 16:20; 20:28, 31; 23:37–39.
  2. 57:6 Smooth stones: the Hebrew word for this expression has the same consonants as the word for “portion”; instead of making the Lord their portion (cf. Ps 16:5), the people adored slabs of stone which they took from the streambeds in valleys and set up as idols; cf. Jer 3:9. Therefore, it is implied, they will be swept away as by a sudden torrent of waters carrying them down the rocky-bottomed gorge to destruction and death without burial.