Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with harlots, and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

A Call to Repentance

“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up.

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his going forth is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

They shall not pour libations of wine to the Lord; and they shall not please him with their sacrifices. Their bread shall be like mourners’ bread; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the Lord.

The days of punishment have come, the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad, because of your great iniquity and great hatred.

I will come against the wayward people to chastise them; and nations shall be gathered against them when they are chastised for their double iniquity.

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain salvation upon you.

I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy E′phraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.

They shall go after the Lord, he will roar like a lion; yea, he will roar, and his sons shall come trembling from the west;

they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.

If there is iniquity in Gilead they shall surely come to nought; if in Gilgal they sacrifice bulls, their altars also shall be like stone heaps on the furrows of the field.

The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son; for now he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb.

Though he may flourish as the reed plant, the east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come, rising from the wilderness; and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched; it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.

O E′phraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit.