You are the one in whom Israel may find hope. All who leave you will suffer shame. Those who turn away from you will be consigned to the nether world. For they have rejected you, the Lord, the fountain of life.

Leave your orphans behind and I will keep them alive. Your widows too can depend on me.”

How deserted will that once-famous city be, that city that was once filled with joy!

You have brought all this on yourself, Israel, by deserting the Lord your God when he was leading you along the right path.

“I will abandon my nation. I will forsake the people I call my own. I will turn my beloved people over to the power of their enemies.

Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn in the field because there is no grass.

Does the snow ever completely vanish from the rocky slopes of Lebanon? Do the cool waters from those distant mountains ever cease to flow?

The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

Leave your towns, you inhabitants of Moab. Go and live in the cliffs. Be like a dove that makes its nest high on the sides of a ravine.

Then tell them that the Lord says, ‘It is because your ancestors rejected me and paid allegiance to other gods. They have served them and worshiped them. But they have rejected me and not obeyed my law.

In this way I will pass sentence on the people of Jerusalem and Judah because of all their wickedness. For they rejected me and offered sacrifices to other gods, worshiping what they made with their own hands.”

At the sound of the approaching horsemen and archers the people of every town will flee. Some of them will hide in the thickets. Others will climb up among the rocks. All the cities will be deserted. No one will remain in them.

The Lord asked, “How can I leave you unpunished, Jerusalem? Your people have rejected me and have worshiped gods that are not gods at all. Even though I supplied all their needs, they were like an unfaithful wife to me. They went flocking to the houses of prostitutes.

(9:1) I wish I had a lodging place in the desert where I could spend some time like a weary traveler. Then I would desert my people and walk away from them because they are all unfaithful to God, a congregation of people that has been disloyal to him.

The Lord answered, “This has happened because these people have rejected my laws which I gave them. They have not obeyed me or followed those laws.

For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion. They will wail, ‘We are utterly ruined! We are completely disgraced! For our houses have been torn down and we must leave our land.’”

The person who gathers wealth by unjust means is like the partridge that broods over eggs but does not hatch them. Before his life is half over he will lose his ill-gotten gains. At the end of his life it will be clear he was a fool.”

The Lord is like a lion who has left his lair. So their lands will certainly be laid waste by the warfare of the oppressive nation and by the fierce anger of the Lord.”

Foreigners living there will say, ‘We tried to heal her, but she could not be healed. Let’s leave Babylonia and each go back to his own country. For judgment on her will be vast in its proportions. It will be like it is piled up to heaven, stacked up into the clouds.’

“Do so because my people have committed a double wrong: they have rejected me, the fountain of life-giving water, and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.”