Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 220
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IMMERSE
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PROPHETS
2:33–3:5
Yet for years on end
my people have forgotten me.
“How you plot and scheme to win your lovers.
Even an experienced prostitute could learn from you!
Your clothing is stained with the blood of the innocent and the poor,
though you didn’t catch them breaking into your houses!
And yet you say,
‘I have done nothing wrong.
Surely God isn’t angry with me!’
But now I will punish you severely
because you claim you have not sinned.
First here, then there—
you flit from one ally to another asking for help.
But your new friends in Egypt will let you down,
just as Assyria did before.
In despair, you will be led into exile
with your hands on your heads,
for the Lord has rejected the nations you trust.
They will not help you at all.
“If a man divorces a woman
and she goes and marries someone else,
he will not take her back again,
for that would surely corrupt the land.
But you have prostituted yourself with many lovers,
so why are you trying to come back to me?”
says the Lord.
“Look at the shrines on every hilltop.
Is there any place you have not been defiled
by your adultery with other gods?
You sit like a prostitute beside the road waiting for a customer.
You sit alone like a nomad in the desert.
You have polluted the land with your prostitution
and your wickedness.
That’s why even the spring rains have failed.
For you are a brazen prostitute and completely shameless.
Yet you say to me,
‘Father, you have been my guide since my youth.
Surely you won’t be angry forever!
Surely you can forget about it!’
So you talk,
but you keep on doing all the evil you can.”
