Their actions made the land unclean, and so the LORD is punishing the land and making it reject the people who lived there.

The LORD said, "Keep all my laws and commands, so that you will not be rejected by the land of Canaan, into which I am bringing you.

Listen to the sound of crying in Zion: "We are ruined! We are completely disgraced! We must leave our land; our homes have been torn down."

"I, the Sovereign LORD, say: It is true that people say that the land eats people and that it robs the nation of its children.

"Mortal man," he said, "when the Israelites were living in their land, they defiled it by the way they lived and acted. I regarded their behavior as being as ritually unclean as a woman is during her monthly period.

For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth.

But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit you out of my mouth!