Jeremiah 3

If a man sends away his wife and she departs from him and becomes another man's, shall she indeed return to him again? Shall not that woman be utterly defiled? Yet you played the whore with many shepherds, and you kept returning to me, says the Lord.

Lift up your eyes straight ahead and see: where have you not been defiled? By the roads you sat for them like a desolate crow, and you defiled the land with your fornications and with your evils.

And you had many shepherds for a stumbling block to yourself; you had the look of a prostitute; you were shameless toward all.

Did you not call me a home, and father, and the leader of your virginity?

Will it remain forever, or be kept to the end? Behold, you spoke, yet you did these evil things, and you prevailed.

And the Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what the settlement of Israel did to me? They went upon every high mountain and under every leafy tree, and played the whore there.

And after she had committed all these fornications, I said: Return to me. But she did not return. And faithless Judah saw her faithlessness.

And I saw that, for all the things in which the settlement of Israel was caught committing adultery, I sent her away and gave a bill of divorce into her hands; yet faithless Judah did not fear, but went and played the whore herself also.

And her fornication came to nothing, and she committed adultery with the wood and the stone.

And in all these things faithless Judah did not turn back to me with her whole heart, but in falsehood.

And the Lord said to me: Israel has justified his soul more than faithless Judah.

Go and read these words toward the north, and say: Turn back to me, O settlement of Israel, says the Lord, and I will not set my face against you, for I am merciful, says the Lord, and I will not be wrathful with you forever.

Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you acted impiously against the Lord your God, and scattered your ways to strangers under every leafy tree, and did not obey my voice, says the Lord.

Turn back, O sons who have departed, says the Lord, for I will be lord over you; and I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and bring you into Zion.

And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and they shall shepherd you, shepherding with knowledge.

And it shall be, when you multiply and increase upon the land in those days, says the Lord, they shall no longer say, 'the ark of the covenant of the Holy One of Israel'; it shall not come up into the heart, it shall not be named nor visited, and it shall not be made again.

In those days and at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered to her, and they shall no longer go after the devices of their evil heart.

In those days the house of Judah shall come together with the house of Israel, and they shall come together from the land of the north and from all the countries, to the land which I gave as an inheritance to their fathers.

And I said: Let it be, O Lord! For I will set you among children and give you a choice land, an inheritance of God Almighty of nations. And I said: You shall call me Father, and you shall not turn away from me.

But just as a woman is faithless to the one who lives with her, so the house of Israel was faithless to me, says the Lord.

A voice was heard from lips, of weeping and supplication of the sons of Israel, because they did wrong in their ways, they forgot their holy God.

Turn back, O sons who turn back, and I will heal your fractures. Behold, we will be your slaves, for you are the Lord our God.

Truly the hills and the power of the mountains were for a lie; but through the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.

But the shame consumed the labours of our fathers from our youth — their sheep and their calves and their sons and their daughters.

We lay down in our shame, and our dishonour covered us; for before our God we sinned, we and our fathers, from our youth until this day, and we did not obey the voice of the Lord our God.