I will seek the lost and bring back the strays; I will bandage the injured and strengthen the sick, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them – with judgment!

“‘In a controversy they will act as judges; they will judge according to my ordinances. They will keep my laws and my statutes regarding all my appointed festivals and will observe my Sabbaths.

Thus they will provide the lamb, the grain offering, and the olive oil morning by morning, as a perpetual burnt offering.

You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths!

I did this because they rejected my regulations, did not follow my statutes, and desecrated my Sabbaths; for their hearts followed their idols.

You must bear your punishment for your obscene conduct and your abominable practices, declares the Lord.

You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled over them.

It will be the duty of the prince to provide the burnt offerings, the grain offering, and the drink offering at festivals, on the new moons and Sabbaths, at all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel; he will provide the sin offering, the grain offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings to make atonement for the house of Israel.

“I have made your face adamant to match their faces, and your forehead hard to match their foreheads.

“When they return to it, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations.

I am the Lord your God; follow my statutes, observe my regulations, and carry them out.

Treat my Sabbaths as holy and they will be a reminder of our relationship, and then you will know that I am the Lord your God.”

“Her sister Oholibah watched this, but she became more corrupt in her lust than her sister had been, and her acts of prostitution were more numerous than those of her sister.

Moreover, they have done this to me: In the very same day they desecrated my sanctuary and profaned my Sabbaths.

You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the choice animals, but you do not feed the sheep!

I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.

Moreover, they will teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the ceremonially unclean and the clean.

But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness; they did not follow my statutes and they rejected my regulations (the one who obeys them will live by them), and they utterly desecrated my Sabbaths. So I decided to pour out my rage on them in the wilderness and destroy them.

I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again because of all your abominable practices.

so that they may follow my statutes and observe my regulations and carry them out. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God.