22. “Although you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your crookedness is ingrained before Me,” declares the Master יהוה.
23. “How do you say, ‘I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Ba‛als’? See your way in the valley, know what you have done: a swift dromedary breaking loose in her ways,
24. a wild donkey used to the wilderness, sniffing the wind in the desire of her being – in her time of mating, who turns her away? All those who seek her need not weary themselves; in her month they find her.
25. “Keep your foot from being bare, and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is useless, because I love strangers, and after them I go.’
26. “As the thief is ashamed when he is found out, so is the house of Yisra’ĕl ashamed – they and their sovereigns and their heads, and their priests and their prophets,
27. saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face. But in the time of their calamity they say, ‘Arise and save us.’