"Why did my people fail to respond when I went to them to save them? Why did they not answer when I called? Am I too weak to save them? I can dry up the sea with a command and turn rivers into a desert, so that the fish in them die for lack of water.

He is astonished to see that there is no one to help the oppressed. So he will use his own power to rescue them and to win the victory.

"Don't they know?" asks the LORD. "Are all these evildoers ignorant? They live by robbing my people, and they never pray to me."

I looked for someone who could build a wall, who could stand in the places where the walls have crumbled and defend the land when my anger is about to destroy it, but I could find no one.

"In the heat of their anger they murdered their rulers. Their kings have been assassinated one after another, but no one prays to me for help."

They have not prayed to me sincerely, but instead they throw themselves down and wail as the heathen do. When they pray for grain and wine, they gash themselves like pagans. What rebels they are!

But if the enemies of my people want my protection, let them make peace with me. Yes, let them make peace with me."

The LORD says to such a man, "If you honor me by observing the Sabbath and if you do what pleases me and faithfully keep my covenant,

I was angry with them because of their sin and greed, and so I punished them and abandoned them. But they were stubborn and kept on going their own way.

It is because of your sins that he doesn't hear you. It is your sins that separate you from God when you try to worship him.

When that happens, I will become angry with them; I will abandon them, and they will be destroyed. Many terrible disasters will come upon them, and then they will realize that these things are happening to them because I, their God, am no longer with them.

"When the LORD saw this, he was angry and rejected his sons and daughters.

With their idols they have made me angry, jealous with their so-called gods, gods that are really not gods. So I will use a so-called nation to make them angry; I will make them jealous with a nation of fools.

" 'I will bring on them endless disasters and use all my arrows against them.

War will bring death in the streets; terrors will strike in the homes. Young men and young women will die; neither babies nor old people will be spared.

"I will abandon my people until they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps in their suffering they will try to find me."

Because of this the LORD Almighty says, "I will refine my people like metal and put them to the test. My people have done evil--- what else can I do with them?

"Mortal man, the Israelites are of no use to me. They are like waste metal---copper, tin, iron, and lead---left over after silver has been refined in a furnace.

in the same way that the ore of silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin is put in a refining furnace. My anger and rage will melt them the way fire melts ore.

They will be melted in Jerusalem the way silver is melted in a furnace, and then they will know that they are feeling the anger of the LORD."

Now set the empty bronze pot on the coals and let it get red-hot. Then the pot will be ritually pure again after the corrosion is burned off,

Your children must have sinned against God, and so he punished them as they deserved.