Jeremiah 3

¹ The word of Yahweh was addressed to me saying: ‘If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry someone else, may she still go back to him? Has not that piece of land been totally polluted? And you, who have prostituted yourself with so many lovers, you would come back to me? – it is Yahweh who speaks.

² ‘Lift your eyes to the bare heights and look! Is there a single place where you have not offered your body? You waited by the roadside for clients like an Arab in the desert. You have polluted the country with your prostitution and your vices:

³ this is why the showers have been withheld, the late rains have not come. ‘And you maintained a prostitute’s bold front, never thinking to blush.

⁴ Even then did you not cry to me, “My father! You, the friend of my youth!

⁵ Will he keep his resentment for ever, will he maintain his wrath to the end?” That was what you said, and still you went on sinning, you were so obstinate.’

⁶ In the days of King Josiah, Yahweh said to me, ‘Have you seen what disloyal Israel has done? How she has made her way up every high hill and to every spreading tree, and has prostituted herself there?

⁷ I thought: After doing all this she will come back to me. But she did not come back. Her faithless sister Judah saw this.

⁸ She also saw that I had repudiated disloyal Israel for all her adulteries and given her her divorce papers. Her faithless sister Judah, however, was not afraid: she too went and played the whore.

⁹ So shameless was her whoring that at last she polluted the country; she committed adultery with lumps of stone and pieces of wood.

¹⁰ Worse than all this: Judah, her faithless sister, has not come back to me in sincerity, but only in pretence – it is Yahweh who speaks.’

¹¹ And Yahweh said to me, ‘Beside faithless Judah, disloyal Israel seems virtuous.

¹² So go and shout these words towards the North: “Come back, disloyal Israel – it is Yahweh who speaks – I shall frown on you no more, since I am merciful – it is Yahweh who speaks. I shall not keep my resentment for ever.

¹³ Only acknowledge your guilt: how you have apostatised from Yahweh your God, how you have flirted with strangers and have not listened to my voice – it is Yahweh who speaks.

¹⁴ “Come back, disloyal children – it is Yahweh who speaks – for I alone am your Master. I will take one from a town, two from a clan, and bring you to Zion.

¹⁵ I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and these shall feed you on knowledge and discretion.

¹⁶ And when you have increased and become many in the land, then – it is Yahweh who speaks – no one will ever say again: Where is the ark of the covenant of Yahweh? There will be no thought of it, no memory of it, no regret for it, no making of another.[*a]

¹⁷ When that time comes, Jerusalem shall be called: The Throne of Yahweh; all the nations will gather there in the name of Yahweh and will no longer follow the dictates of their own stubborn hearts.

¹⁸ “In those days the House of Judah will unite with the House of Israel; together they will come from the land of the North to the land I gave your ancestors for a heritage.

¹⁹ “And I was thinking: How I wanted to rank you with my sons, and give you a country of delights, the fairest heritage of all the nations! I had thought you would call me: My father, and would never cease to follow me.

²⁰ But like a woman betraying her lover, the House of Israel has betrayed me – it is Yahweh who speaks.”‘

²¹ A noise is heard on the bare heights: the weeping and entreaty of the sons of Israel, because they have gone so wildly astray, and forgotten Yahweh their God.

²² ‘Come back, disloyal sons, I want to heal your disloyalty.’ ‘We are here, we are coming to you, for you are Yahweh our God.

²³ The heights are a delusion after all, so is the tumult of the mountains. ‘Yahweh our God is, after all, the saving of Israel.

²⁴ The Thing of Shame[*c] has devoured what our ancestors worked for since our youth (their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters).

²⁵ Let us lie down in our shame, let our dishonour be our covering, for we have sinned against Yahweh our God (‘we and our ancestors since our youth until today; and we have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God).’