2. “Look up to the bare hilltops, Judah. Is there any place where you have not had sex with your lovers? You sat by the road waiting for lovers, like an Arab in the desert. You made the land ‘dirty’ with all the evil sins you did when you were unfaithful to me.
3. You sinned, so the rain has not come. There has not been any springtime rains. But still you refuse to be ashamed. The look on your face is like that of a prostitute who refuses to be ashamed.
4. But didn’t you just call me ‘Father’? Didn’t you say, ‘You have been my friend since I was a child’?
5. You also said, ‘God will not always be angry with me. His anger will not continue forever.’ “Judah, you say that, but you do as much evil as you can.”
6. The Lord spoke to me during the time King Josiah was ruling the nation of Judah. He said, “Jeremiah, you saw the bad things Israel did! You saw how she was unfaithful to me. She was unfaithful to me with every idol on every hill and under every green tree.
7. I said to myself, ‘Israel will come back to me after she has finished doing these evil things.’ But she did not come back to me. And Israel’s unfaithful sister, Judah, saw what she did.
8. Israel was unfaithful, and she knew why I sent her away. Israel knew that I divorced her because she committed the sin of adultery. But that did not make her unfaithful sister afraid. Judah was not afraid. She also went out and acted like a prostitute.
9. Judah did not care that she was acting like a prostitute. So she made her country ‘dirty.’ She committed the sin of adultery by worshiping idols made out of stone and wood.
19-20. This message is from the Lord: “I want to treat you like my own children. I want to give you a pleasant land, a land more beautiful than any other nation. I thought you would call me ‘Father.’ I thought you would always follow me. But you have been unfaithful to me, family of Israel! You have been like an unfaithful wife who leaves her husband.
21. You can hear crying on the bare hills. The people of Israel are crying and praying for mercy. They became very evil. They forgot the Lord their God.
22. “People of Israel, you are unfaithful to me, but come back to me. Come back and I will forgive you for being unfaithful. “Just say, ‘Yes, we will come back, because you are the Lord our God.
23. It was foolish to worship idols on the hills. All the loud parties on the mountains were wrong. Surely the salvation of Israel comes from the Lord our God.
24. That terrible false god Baal has eaten everything our fathers owned. This has happened since we were children. That terrible false god took our fathers’ sheep and cattle and their sons and daughters.
25. Let us lie down in our shame. Let our shame cover us like a blanket. We have sinned against the Lord our God. We and our fathers have sinned. We have not obeyed the Lord our God from the time we were children.’”