Jeremiah 3:19-4:4

English Standard Version

¹⁹“‘I said,
    How I would set you among my sons,
and give you a pleasant land,
    a heritage most beautiful of all nations.
And I thought you would ^(A)call me, My Father,
    and would not turn from following me.
²⁰^(B)Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband,
    so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel,
declares the Lord.’”

²¹A voice on the ^(C)bare heights is heard,
    ^(D)the weeping and pleading of Israel's sons
because they have perverted their way;
    they have forgotten the Lord their God.
²²^(E)“Return, O faithless sons;
    ^(F)I will heal your faithlessness.”
“Behold, we come to you,
    for you are the Lord our God.
²³Truly ^(G)the hills are a delusion,
    the orgies^[a] on the mountains.
^(H)Truly in the Lord our God
    is the salvation of Israel.

²⁴“But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. ²⁵^(I)Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For ^(J)we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

4 “If you return, O Israel,
declares the Lord,
    ^(K)to me you should return.
If you remove your detestable things from my presence,
    ^(L)and do not waver,
²^(M)and if you swear, ‘As the Lord lives,’
    in truth, in justice, and in righteousness,
then ^(N)nations shall bless themselves in him,
    ^(O)and in him shall they glory.”

³For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem:

^(P)“Break up your fallow ground,
    and ^(Q)sow not among thorns.
⁴^(R)Circumcise yourselves to the Lord;
    remove the foreskin of your hearts,
    O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;
^(S)lest my wrath go forth like fire,
    and burn with none to quench it,
    ^(T)because of the evil of your deeds.”