and said, "What is this proverb people keep repeating in the land of Israel? 'The parents ate the sour grapes, But the children got the sour taste.'

"As surely as I am the living God," says the Sovereign LORD, "you will not repeat this proverb in Israel any more.

You know the old saying, 'Evil is done only by evil people.' And so I will not harm you.

Tell Jerusalem what the Sovereign LORD is saying to her: "You were born in the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite, and your mother was a Hittite.

You really are your mother's daughter. She detested her husband and her children. You are like your sisters, who hated their husbands and their children. You and your sister cities had a Hittite mother and an Amorite father.

At once Ahab went to the vineyard to take possession of it.

and they burned incense on all the pagan altars, following the practice of the people whom the LORD had driven out of the land. They aroused the LORD's anger with all their wicked deeds

They refused to obey his instructions, they did not keep the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they disregarded his warnings. They worshiped worthless idols and became worthless themselves, and they followed the customs of the surrounding nations, disobeying the LORD's command not to imitate them.

But the people of Judah did not obey the LORD, and Manasseh led them to commit even greater sins than those committed by the nations whom the LORD had driven out of the land as his people advanced.

After all this had been done, some of the leaders of the people of Israel came and told me that the people, the priests, and the Levites had not kept themselves separate from the people in the neighboring countries of Ammon, Moab, and Egypt or from the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites. They were doing the same disgusting things which these people did.

but they intermarried with them and adopted their pagan ways.

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