without taking my children and sacrificing them to idols?

The older one was named Oholah (she represents Samaria), and the younger one was named Oholibah (she represents Jerusalem). I married both of them, and they bore me children.

"I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants.

"Dedicate all the first-born males to me, for every first-born male Israelite and every first-born male animal belongs to me."

you must offer every first-born male to the LORD. Every first-born male of your animals belongs to the LORD,

women, and children, and the foreigners who live among you and cut wood and carry water for you.

You are here today to enter into this covenant that the LORD your God is making with you and to accept its obligations,

I let them defile themselves with their own offerings, and I let them sacrifice their first-born sons. This was to punish them and show them that I am the LORD.

Even today you offer the same gifts and defile yourselves with the same idols by sacrificing your children to them in the fire. And then you Israelites still come to ask what my will is! As surely as I, the Sovereign LORD, am the living God, I will not let you ask me anything.

They have committed adultery and murder---adultery with idols and murder of the children they bore me. They sacrificed my children to their idols.

The very day that they killed my children as sacrifices to idols, they came to my Temple and profaned it!

and followed the example of the kings of Israel. He even sacrificed his own son as a burnt offering to idols, imitating the disgusting practice of the people whom the LORD had driven out of the land as the Israelites advanced.

He sacrificed his sons in Hinnom Valley as burnt offerings. He practiced divination and magic and consulted fortunetellers and mediums. He sinned greatly against the LORD and stirred up his anger.

They offered their own sons and daughters as sacrifices to the idols of Canaan.

They killed those innocent children, and the land was defiled by those murders.

You worship the fertility gods by having sex under those sacred trees of yours. You offer your children as sacrifices in the rocky caves near stream beds.

In Hinnom Valley they have built an altar called Topheth, so that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters in the fire. I did not command them to do this---it did not even enter my mind.

They have built altars to Baal in Hinnom Valley, to sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god Molech. I did not command them to do this, and it did not even enter my mind that they would do such a thing and make the people of Judah sin."

Will the LORD be pleased if I bring him thousands of sheep or endless streams of olive oil? Shall I offer him my first-born child to pay for my sins?

The LORD said to me, "Mortal man, do you see that? These people of Judah are not satisfied with merely doing all the disgusting things you have seen here and with spreading violence throughout the country. No, they must come and do them right here in the Temple and make me even more angry. Look how they insult me in the most offensive way possible!

Your clothes are stained with the blood of the poor and innocent, not with the blood of burglars. "But in spite of all this,

you say, 'I am innocent; surely the LORD is no longer angry with me.' But I, the LORD, will punish you because you deny that you have sinned.