Jeremiah 2:29-3:5

English Standard Version

²⁹“Why do you contend with me?
    You have all transgressed against me,
declares the Lord.
³⁰In vain have I ^(A)struck your children;
    they took no correction;
^(B)your own sword devoured your prophets
    like a ravening lion.
³¹And you, O generation, behold the word of the Lord.
Have I been a wilderness to Israel,
    or a land of thick darkness?
Why then do my people say, ‘We are free,
    we will come no more to you’?
³²^(C)Can a virgin forget her ornaments,
    or a bride her attire?
Yet ^(D)my people have forgotten me
    days without number.

³³“How well you direct your course
    to seek love!
So that even to wicked women
    you have taught your ways.
³⁴Also on your skirts is found
    ^(E)the lifeblood of the guiltless poor;
you did not find them ^(F)breaking in.
    Yet in spite of all these things
³⁵you say, ‘I am innocent;
    surely his anger has turned from me.’
^(G)Behold, I will bring you to judgment
    for ^(H)saying, ‘I have not sinned.’
³⁶^(I)How much you go about,
    changing your way!
You shall be ^(J)put to shame by Egypt
    as you were put to shame by Assyria.
³⁷From it too you will come away
    with ^(K)your hands on your head,
for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust,
    and you will not prosper by them.

3 ^(L)“If^[a] a man divorces his wife
    and she goes from him
and becomes another man's wife,
    will he return to her?
^(M)Would not that land be greatly polluted?
^(N)You have played the whore with many lovers;
    and would you return to me?
declares the Lord.
²Lift up your eyes to ^(O)the bare heights, and see!
    Where have you not been ravished?
^(P)By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers
    like an Arab in the wilderness.
^(Q)You have polluted the land
    with your vile whoredom.
³^(R)Therefore the showers have been withheld,
    and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have ^(S)the forehead of a whore;
    you refuse to be ashamed.
⁴Have you not just now ^(T)called to me,
    ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth—
⁵^(U)will he be angry forever,
    will he be indignant to the end?’
Behold, you have spoken,
    but you have done all the evil that you could.”