¹⁴ Is Israel a slave? Is he a home-born servant?
   Why then has he become plunder?
¹⁵ The lions have roared against him,
   they have roared loudly.
They have made his land a waste;
   his cities are in ruins, without inhabitant.
¹⁶ Moreover, the people of Memphis and Tahpanhes
   have broken the crown of your head.
¹⁷ Have you not brought this upon yourself
   by forsaking the Lord your God,
   while he led you in the way?
¹⁸ What then do you gain by going to Egypt,
   to drink the waters of the Nile?
Or what do you gain by going to Assyria,
   to drink the waters of the Euphrates?
¹⁹ Your wickedness will punish you,
   and your apostasies will convict you.
Know and see that it is evil and bitter
   for you to forsake the Lord your God;
   the fear of me is not in you,

says the Lord God of hosts.

²⁰ For long ago you broke your yoke
   and burst your bonds,
   and you said, ‘I will not serve!’
On every high hill
   and under every green tree
   you sprawled and played the whore.
²¹ Yet I planted you as a choice vine,
   from the purest stock.
How then did you turn degenerate
   and become a wild vine?
²² Though you wash yourself with lye
   and use much soap,
   the stain of your guilt is still before me,

says the Lord God.
²³ How can you say, ‘I am not defiled,
   I have not gone after the Baals’?
Look at your way in the valley;
   know what you have done—
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,
²⁴   a wild ass at home in the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
   Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
   in her month they will find her.
²⁵ Keep your feet from going unshod
   and your throat from thirst.
But you said, ‘It is hopeless,
   for I have loved strangers,
   and after them I will go.’

²⁶ As a thief is shamed when caught,
   so the house of Israel shall be shamed—
they, their kings, their officials,
   their priests, and their prophets,
²⁷ who say to a tree, ‘You are my father’,
   and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
For they have turned their backs to me,
   and not their faces.
But in the time of their trouble they say,
   ‘Come and save us!’
²⁸ But where are your gods
   that you made for yourself?
Let them come, if they can save you,
   in your time of trouble;
for you have as many gods
   as you have towns, O Judah.

²⁹ Why do you complain against me?
   You have all rebelled against me,

says the Lord.
³⁰ In vain I have struck down your children;
   they accepted no correction.
Your own sword devoured your prophets
   like a ravening lion.
³¹ And you, O generation, behold the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel,
   or a land of thick darkness?
Why then do my people say, ‘We are free,
   we will come to you no more’?
³² Can a girl forget her ornaments,
   or a bride her attire?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
   days without number.