²⁴ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward.^(A)

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.^(A)

The Futility of Reliance on Egypt

⁴² But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:

⁹ The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders,^{(A) 10} and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.^{(B) 11} For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false,^(C)

²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse^[a] for unnatural,^{(A) 27} and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse^[b] with females, were consumed with their passionate desires for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.^(B)

¹⁶ In past generations he allowed all peoples to follow their own ways,^(A)

¹⁶ “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.^{(A) 17} Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food and prospered and saw no misfortune.^(B)