1 "It is said: If a man sends his wife away and she leaves him and belongs to another man, will he go back to her again? Would that land not be utterly defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers, and yet return to me," declares the LORD.
2 "Raise your eyes to the bare hills and look: where have you not been lain with? Beside the roads you sat for them like an Arab in the desert, and you defiled the land with your whoring and your evil.
3 So the showers were held back, and the late rain did not come; yet you had the forehead of a prostitute; you would not be ashamed.
4 Did you not just now cry to me, 'My father, you are the friend of my youth;
5 will he hold a grudge forever, will he keep watch over it to the end?' See, you have spoken so, yet you have done the evil things and had your way."
6 In the days of King Josiah the LORD said to me, "Did you see what she did, faithless Israel? She went up onto every high mountain and beneath every leafy tree and played the harlot there.
7 And I said, 'After she has done all this, she will come back to me.' But she did not come back, and her sister, treacherous Judah, saw it.
8 And I saw that, for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a bill of divorce; yet treacherous Judah her sister was not afraid, but she too went and played the harlot.
9 Through the lightness of her harlotry she defiled the land, committing adultery with stone and with wood.
10 Even in all this her treacherous sister Judah did not come back to me with all her heart, but only in pretense," declares the LORD.
11 Then the LORD said to me, "Faithless Israel has proved herself more righteous than treacherous Judah.
12 Go and call out these words toward the north, and say, 'Come back, faithless Israel,' declares the LORD. 'I will not look on you with a fallen face, for I am merciful,' declares the LORD; 'I will not hold a grudge forever.
13 Only acknowledge your iniquity, that against the LORD your God you rebelled, and you scattered your ways to strangers beneath every leafy tree, and my voice you did not obey,' declares the LORD.
14 Come back, O backsliding children," declares the LORD, "for I am a husband to you. I will take you, one from a city and two from a clan, and bring you to Zion.
15 I will give you shepherds after my heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
16 And when you multiply and are fruitful in the land in those days," declares the LORD, "people will no longer say, 'The ark of the covenant of the LORD.' It will not come up on the heart; they will not remember it or miss it, and it will not be made anymore.
17 At that time Jerusalem will be called the throne of the LORD, and all the nations will gather to it, to the name of the LORD at Jerusalem, and they will no longer walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart.
18 In those days the house of Judah will walk along with the house of Israel, and together they will come out of the land of the north to the land I gave your fathers to inherit.
19 "I myself said, 'How I would place you among the sons and give you a delightful land, a heritage most beautiful of the hosts of nations!' And I said, 'You will call me My Father, and you will not turn back from following me.'
20 But as a woman betrays her companion, so you have betrayed me, O house of Israel," declares the LORD.
21 A sound is heard on the bare hills, the weeping and pleading of the children of Israel, for they have twisted their way; they have forgotten the LORD their God.
22 "Come back, O backsliding children; I will heal your turnings away." "Look, we come to you, for you are the LORD our God.
23 Surely the hills are a lie, the clamor on the mountains; surely in the LORD our God is Israel's salvation.
24 From our youth the shameful thing has eaten up what our fathers labored for, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.
25 Let us lie down in our shame, and let our humiliation cover us; for against the LORD our God we have sinned, we and our fathers, from our youth until this day, and we have not listened to the voice of the LORD our God."