¹¹ Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.^(A)

Further Assurances of God’s Redeeming Love

3 The Lord said to me again, “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”^(A)

¹⁵ But you trusted in your beauty and prostituted yourself because of your fame and lavished your prostitutions on any passer-by.^{[a](A) 16} You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful high places and on them prostituted yourself; nothing like this has ever been or ever shall be.^{[b](B) 17} You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and my silver that I had given you and made for yourself male images and with them prostituted yourself,^{(C) 18} and you took your embroidered garments to cover them and set my oil and my incense before them. ¹⁹ Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with choice flour and oil and honey—you set it before them as a pleasing odor, and so it was, says the Lord God. ²⁰ You took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. As if your prostitutions were not enough!^{(D) 21} You slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering to them.^{(E) 22} And in all your abominations and your prostitutions you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, flailing about in your blood.^(F)

²³ After all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! says the Lord God), ²⁴ you built yourself a platform and made yourself a lofty place in every square;^{(G) 25} at the head of every street you built your lofty place and prostituted your beauty, offering yourself^[c] to every passer-by and multiplying your prostitution.^{(H) 26} You prostituted yourself with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors,^[d] multiplying your prostitution, to provoke me to anger.^{(I) 27} Therefore I stretched out my hand against you, reduced your rations, and gave you up to the will of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior.^{(J) 28} You prostituted yourself with the Assyrians because you were insatiable; you prostituted yourself with them, and still you were not satisfied.^{(K) 29} You multiplied your prostitution with Chaldea, the land of merchants, and even with this you were not satisfied.^(L)

³⁰ How sick is your heart,^[e] says the Lord God, that you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, ³¹ building your platform at the head of every street and making your lofty place in every square! Yet you were not like a prostitute because you scorned payment. ³² Adulterous wife who receives strangers instead of her husband! ³³ Gifts are given to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from all around for your prostitutions.^{(M) 34} So you were different from other women in your prostitutions: no one solicited you to prostitute yourself, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; you were different.

³⁵ Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: ³⁶ Thus says the Lord God: Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your prostitution with your lovers, and because of all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them,^{(N) 37} therefore, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated; I will gather them against you from all around and will uncover your nakedness to them so that they may see all your nakedness.^{(O) 38} I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged and bring blood upon you in wrath and jealousy.^{(P) 39} I will deliver you into their hands, and they shall throw down your platform and break down your lofty places; they shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful objects and leave you naked and bare.^{(Q) 40} They shall bring up a mob against you, and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords.^{(R) 41} They shall burn your houses and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; I will stop you from prostituting yourself, and you shall also make no more payments.^{(S) 42} So I will satisfy my fury on you, and my jealousy shall turn away from you; I will be calm and will be angry no longer. ⁴³ Because you have not remembered the days of your youth but have enraged me with all these things, therefore I have returned your deeds upon your head, says the Lord God.

Have you not committed lewdness beyond all your abominations?^{(T) 44} See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, “Like mother, like daughter.”^{(U) 45} You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children, and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. ⁴⁶ Your big sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; your little sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters.^{(V) 47} You not only followed their ways and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.^{(W) 48} As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.^{(X) 49} This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy.^{(Y) 50} They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.^{(Z) 51} Samaria has not committed half your sins; you have committed more abominations than they and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed.^{(AA) 52} Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have brought about for your sisters a more favorable judgment; because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

⁸ She^[a] saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce, yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she also went and prostituted herself.^{(A) 9} Because she took her prostitution so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.^{(B) 10} Yet for all this her false sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart but only in pretense, says the Lord.^(C)