“Was your mother sent away because I divorced her?
    Did I sell you as slaves to my creditors?
No, you were sold because of your sins.
    And your mother, too, was taken because of your sins.

¹ O God, why have you rejected us so long?
    Why is your anger so intense against the sheep of your own pasture?

¹² You sold your precious people for a pittance,
    making nothing on the sale.

¹⁶ They stirred up his jealousy by worshiping foreign gods;
    they provoked his fury with detestable deeds.
¹⁷ They offered sacrifices to demons, which are not God,
    to gods they had not known before,
to new gods only recently arrived,
    to gods their ancestors had never feared.
¹⁸ You neglected the Rock who had fathered you;
    you forgot the God who had given you birth.

¹⁹ “The Lord saw this and drew back,
    provoked to anger by his own sons and daughters.
²⁰ He said, ‘I will abandon them;
    then see what becomes of them.
For they are a twisted generation,
    children without integrity.
²¹ They have roused my jealousy by worshiping things that are not God;
    they have provoked my anger with their useless idols.
Now I will rouse their jealousy through people who are not even a people;
    I will provoke their anger through the foolish Gentiles.
²² For my anger blazes forth like fire
    and burns to the depths of the grave.^[a]
It devours the earth and all its crops
    and ignites the foundations of the mountains.