Although Ephraim has built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning!

I have not even permitted my mouth to sin by asking for his life through a curse –

Yet they continued to sin against him, and rebelled against the sovereign One in the desert.

Then he is to take two birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop to decontaminate the house,

When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder ceased, he sinned again: both he and his servants hardened their hearts.

or has found something lost and denies it and swears falsely concerning any one of the things that someone might do to sin –

Even now they persist in sin! They make metal images for themselves, idols that they skillfully fashion from their own silver; all of them are nothing but the work of craftsmen! There is a saying about them: “Those who sacrifice to the calf idol are calf kissers!”