In the future, you will be ashamed of the oak trees and special gardens you chose to worship,

His land is full of gods that the people bow down to worship. They made those idols themselves.

At that time people will throw away their idols they made from gold and silver. They made these statues to worship, but they will throw them into holes in the ground where bats and moles live.

I defeated those evil kingdoms and now I control them. The idols those people worship are better than the idols of Jerusalem and Samaria.

The king’s family and the people of Dibon go to the places of worship to cry. The people of Moab are crying for Nebo and Medeba. They have shaved their heads and beards to show their sadness.

The people of Moab will go to their high places to worship. They will go to their temple to pray, but it will not help them.

How will Jacob’s guilt be forgiven? What will happen so his sins can be taken away? The rocks of the altar will be crushed to dust; the statues and altars for worshiping false gods will all be destroyed.

The Lord says, “These people come to honor me with words, but I am not really important to them. The worship they give me is nothing but human rules they have memorized.

You will sing happy songs, like the nights when you begin a festival. You will be very happy walking to the Lord’s mountain and listening to the flute on the way to worship the Rock of Israel.

“‘So maybe you will say, “We trust the Lord our God to help us.” But Hezekiah destroyed the altars and high places where people worshiped your God, right? Hezekiah told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship only at this one altar here in Jerusalem.”

One day Sennacherib was in the temple of his god Nisroch, worshiping him. His sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with a sword and ran away to Ararat. So Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon became the new king of Assyria.

“Look, you false gods are worthless. You cannot do anything. Only some horrible fool would want to worship you.”

When the man wanted a fire, he took some of the wood to keep him warm. He also used some of it to bake his bread. But then he used that same wood to make a statue to worship as a god! That god is only a statue that he made, but he bows down to it!

There is a little of the wood left, so he makes a statue and calls it his god. He bows down before it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “You are my god, save me!”

They don’t realize what they are doing. They aren’t smart enough to think, “I burned half of the wood in the fire. I used the hot coals to bake my bread and cook the meat I ate. And I used the wood that was left to make this terrible thing. I am worshiping a block of wood!”

Some people are rich with gold and silver. Gold falls from their purses, and they weigh their silver on scales. They pay an artist to make a false god from wood. Then they bow down and worship that false god.

“Some foreigners have chosen to follow the Lord. They do this so that they can serve him and love his name and be his servants. They keep the Sabbath as a special day of worship, and they will continue to follow closely my agreement.

All you want is to worship false gods under every green tree. You kill children by every stream and sacrifice them in the rocky places.

You love to worship the smooth rocks in the rivers. You pour wine on them to worship them. You give sacrifices to them, but those rocks are all you get. Do you think this makes me happy?

They still come every day to worship me, acting as if they want to learn my ways. They pretend to be a nation that lives right and obeys the commands of their God. They ask me to judge them fairly. They want their God to be near them.

Our ancestors worshiped you in our holy Temple. That wonderful Temple has now been burned. All our precious possessions have been destroyed.

“But you people left the Lord, so you will be punished. You forgot about my holy mountain. You began to worship Luck. You held feasts for the false god, Fate.

The Lord says, “These are the people who wash themselves and make themselves pure so that they can go into their special gardens to worship their idols. They follow each other into the gardens to eat meat from pigs, rats, and other dirty things. But they will all be destroyed together.

Everyone will come to worship me on every worship day; they will come every Sabbath and every first day of the month. This is what I, the Lord, have said.