Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid; be greatly desolated, says Jehovah.

For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Waters, to hew out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.

The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their own power; and my people love to have it so, and what will you do in the end?

Therefore thus says Jehovah, Ask now among the nations; who has heard the likes of this? The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.

I have also seen in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing; they commit adultery and walk in falsehood. They also strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns back from his evil; they are all of them like Sodom to Me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.

Harlotry and wine and new wine snatch away the heart.

Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone.

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me. For now, O Ephraim, you have committed harlotry; Israel is defiled.

But he rejected the counsel which the elders had given him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, who were standing before him.

because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he had sinned and by which he had made Israel sin, because of his provocation with which he had provoked Jehovah the God of Israel to anger.

For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they feared other gods,

Jehovah also said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and has committed adultery there.

Oholah committed adultery even though she was Mine; and she lusted for her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians,