“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says YHWH.
“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain; yet you have had a prostitute’s forehead and you refused to be ashamed. Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth!’?
“‘Will ʜᴇ retain his anger forever? Will ʜᴇ keep it forever?’ This is what you have said, but you have done evil things and have had your way.”
Backsliding Israel
Moreover, YHWH said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and has played the prostitute there. I said after she had done all these things, ‘She will return to me;’ but she didn’t return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. I saw when, for this very cause, that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet treacherous Judah, her sister, had no fear, but she also went and played the prostitute. Because she took her prostitution lightly, the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with wood. Yet for all this her treacherous sister, Judah, has not returned to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense,” says YHWH.
YHWH said to me, “Backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, backsliding Israel,’ says YHWH, ‘I will not look in anger on y’all, for I am merciful,’ says YHWH. ‘I will not stay angry forever. Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against YHWH your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and y’all have not obeyed my voice,’” says YHWH. “Return, y’all backsliding children,” says YHWH, “for I am a husband to y’all. I will take one of y’all from a city, and two from a family, and I will bring y’all to Zion. I will give y’all shepherds after my own heart, who will feed y’all with knowledge and understanding. When y’all increase in number and bear fruit in the land in those days,” says YHWH, “they will no longer say, ‘the ark of YHWH’s covenant!’ It will not come to mind. They won’t remember it. They won’t miss it, nor will another be made. At that time they will call Jerusalem ‘YHWH’s Throne’ and all the nations will be gathered to it, to the name of YHWH in Jerusalem. They will no longer walk after the stubbornness of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave as an inheritance to y’all’s ancestors.
“But I said, ‘How I desire to put you among the children, and give you a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the armies of the nations!’ and I said, ‘Y’all are to call me “My Father”, and y’all must not turn away from following me.’
“Indeed as a woman betrays her companion, so y’all betrayed me, house of Israel,” says YHWH. A voice is heard on the bare heights, the weeping and the petitions of the children of Israel, because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten YHWH their God. “Return, y’all backsliding children, and I will heal y’all’s backsliding.”
“Look, we have come to you, for you are YHWH our God. Truly help from the hills, the tumult on the mountains, is in vain. Truly the salvation of Israel is in YHWH our God. But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our ancestors from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion cover us. For we have sinned against YHWH our God, we and our ancestors, from our youth even to this day. We have not obeyed YHWH our God’s voice.”