Israel, don't wear your feet out, or let your throat become dry from chasing after other gods. But you say, 'No! I can't turn back. I have loved foreign gods and will go after them.' "

He had hardly finished saying this, when the king arrived and said, "It's the LORD who has brought this trouble on us! Why should I wait any longer for him to do something?"

You wear yourselves out looking for other gods, but you never give up. You think your obscene idols give you strength, and so you never grow weak.

God said to me, "Mortal man, the people of Israel are like these bones. They say that they are dried up, without any hope and with no future.

When that time comes, Jerusalem will be called 'The Throne of the LORD,' and all nations will gather there to worship me. They will no longer do what their stubborn and evil hearts tell them.

But they did not obey or pay any attention. Instead, they did whatever their stubborn and evil hearts told them to do, and they became worse instead of better.

But they did not listen or obey. Instead, everyone continued to be as stubborn and evil as ever. I had commanded them to keep the covenant, but they refused. So I brought on them all the punishments described in it."

But you have done even worse than your ancestors. All of you are stubborn and evil, and you do not obey me.

To the people who refuse to listen to what I have said, they keep saying that all will go well with them. And they tell everyone who is stubborn that disaster will never touch them."

We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven, and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles.

When the LORD saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time,

The odor of the sacrifice pleased the LORD, and he said to himself, "Never again will I put the earth under a curse because of what people do; I know that from the time they are young their thoughts are evil. Never again will I destroy all living beings, as I have done this time.

Make sure that there is no one here today who hears these solemn demands and yet convinces himself that all will be well with him, even if he stubbornly goes his own way. That would destroy all of you, good and evil alike.

For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill,

commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly---

He has stretched out his mighty arm and scattered the proud with all their plans.