³³ So it was, ^(A)as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel again ^(B)played the harlot with the Baals, ^(C)and made Baal-Berith their god.

⁴⁶ Now when all the men of the tower of Shechem had heard that, they entered the ^[a]stronghold of the temple ^(A)of the god Berith.

⁴ So they gave him seventy shekels of silver from the temple of ^(A)Baal-Berith, with which Abimelech hired ^(B)worthless and reckless men; and they followed him.

²⁷ Then Gideon ^(A)made it into an ephod and set it up in his city, ^(B)Ophrah. And all Israel ^(C)played the harlot with it there. It became ^(D)a snare to Gideon and to his house.

¹⁹ And it came to pass, ^(A)when the judge was dead, that they reverted and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, by following other gods, to serve them and bow down to them. They did not cease from their own doings nor from their stubborn way.

¹⁷ Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they ^(A)played the harlot with other gods, and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked, in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do so.

⁹ So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she ^(A)defiled the land and committed adultery with ^(B)stones and trees.

¹⁷ Now after the death of Jehoiada the leaders of Judah came and bowed down to the king. And the king listened to them. ¹⁸ Therefore they left the house of the Lord God of their fathers, and served ^(A)wooden images and idols; and ^(B)wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of their trespass.

² Jehoash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days in which ^(A)Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

²⁷ So they went out into the fields, and gathered grapes from their vineyards and trod them, and ^[a]made merry. And they went into ^(A)the house of their god, and ate and drank, and cursed Abimelech.