We lie down in our shame, And our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, We and our fathers, From our youth even to this day, And have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God."

" I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself: 'You have chastised me, and I was chastised, Like an untrained bull; Restore me, and I will return, For You [are] the LORD my God.

[Is] Ephraim My dear son? [Is he] a pleasant child? For though I spoke against him, I earnestly remember him still; Therefore My heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, says the LORD.

' [But] if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me,

then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.

"Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call [them] to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God drives you,

"that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you.

Then he looks at men and says, 'I have sinned, and perverted [what was] right, And it did not profit me.'

He will redeem his soul from going down to the Pit, And his life shall see the light.

He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes [them] will have mercy.

'I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you,

"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

"Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see: Where have you not lain [with men?] By the road you have sat for them Like an Arabian in the wilderness; And you have polluted the land With your harlotries and your wickedness.

The LORD said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: "Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot.

" For of old I have broken your yoke [and] burst your bonds; And you said, 'I will not transgress,' When on every high hill and under every green tree You lay down, playing the harlot.

Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst. But you said, 'There is no hope. No! For I have loved aliens, and after them I will go.'

" But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who [would have] it.

"[that] you also built for yourself a shrine, and made a high place for yourself in every street.

"You built your high places at the head of every road, and made your beauty to be abhorred. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your acts of harlotry.

"You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.