Syria has plotted with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah to bring about your demise.

Then the Lord said, “This means destruction will break out from the north on all who live in the land.

“My, how good you have become at chasing after your lovers! Why, you could even teach prostitutes a thing or two!

You will not always be angry with me, will you? You will not be mad at me forever, will you?’ That is what you say, but you continually do all the evil that you can.”

“Oh people of Jerusalem, purify your hearts from evil so that you may yet be delivered. How long will you continue to harbor up wicked schemes within you?

The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely. But there is too much dross to be removed. The process of refining them has proved useless. The wicked have not been purged.

Not one of them will survive. I will bring disaster on those men from Anathoth who threatened you. A day of reckoning is coming for them.”

But they just keep saying, ‘We do not care what you say! We will do whatever we want to do! We will continue to behave wickedly and stubbornly!’”

Moreover, the Lord says, “Both the prophets and priests are godless. I have even found them doing evil in my temple!

But if they had stood in my inner circle, they would have proclaimed my message to my people. They would have caused my people to turn from their wicked ways and stop doing the evil things they are doing.

So, now the Lord says, ‘You have not listened to me. But you have made me angry by the things that you have done. Thus you have brought harm on yourselves.’

But the people of Jerusalem and Judah would not listen or pay any attention. They would not stop the wickedness they were doing nor quit sacrificing to other gods.

They will know that I am the Lord; my threats to bring this catastrophe on them were not empty.’

I will bring the most wicked of the nations and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong, and their sanctuaries will be desecrated.

He said to me, “Go in and see the evil abominations they are practicing here.”

“Suppose I were to send wild animals through the land and kill its children, leaving it desolate, without travelers due to the wild animals.

“‘After all of your evil – “Woe! Woe to you!” declares the sovereign Lord –

They do not realize that I remember all of their wicked deeds. Their evil deeds have now surrounded them; their sinful deeds are always before me.

For this reason whoever is smart keeps quiet in such a time, for it is an evil time.

All the sinners among my people will die by the sword – the ones who say, ‘Disaster will not come near, it will not confront us.’