31. For when you offer gifts to them and give your little children to be burned as sacrifices, you continue to pollute yourselves with idols to this day. Should I allow you to ask for a message from me, O people of Israel? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign lord, I will tell you nothing.
32. “You say, ‘We want to be like the nations all around us, who serve idols of wood and stone.’ But what you have in mind will never happen.
33. As surely as I live, says the Sovereign lord, I will rule over you with an iron fist in great anger and with awesome power.
34. And in anger I will reach out with my strong hand and powerful arm, and I will bring you back from the lands where you are scattered.
35. I will bring you into the wilderness of the nations, and there I will judge you face to face.
36. I will judge you there just as I did your ancestors in the wilderness after bringing them out of Egypt, says the Sovereign lord.
37. I will examine you carefully and hold you to the terms of the covenant.