"But My people would not heed My voice, And Israel would [have] none of Me.

So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.

So will I choose their delusions, And bring their fears on them; Because, when I called, no one answered, When I spoke they did not hear; But they did evil before My eyes, And chose [that] in which I do not delight."

"For anyone of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell in Israel, who separates himself from Me and sets up his idols in his heart and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, then comes to a prophet to inquire of him concerning Me, I the LORD will answer him by Myself.

"And if the prophet is induced to speak anything, I the LORD have induced that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel.

"Therefore I also gave them up to statutes [that were] not good, and judgments by which they could not live;

" As for you, O house of Israel," thus says the Lord GOD: "Go, serve every one of you his idols -- and hereafter -- if you will not obey me; but profane My holy name no more with your gifts and your idols.

"Ephraim [is] joined to idols, Let him alone.

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;

and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

"And [take heed,] lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and [when] you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the LORD your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage.

"who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, either the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded,

So they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, made for themselves a molded image [and] two calves, made a wooden image and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; he raised up altars for Baal, and made a wooden image, as Ahab king of Israel had done; and he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them.

If I have observed the sun when it shines, Or the moon moving [in] brightness,

This also [would be] an iniquity [deserving of] judgment, For I would have denied God [who is] above.

"And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Tophet, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to other gods." ' "

So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, [were] about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

" Did you offer Me sacrifices and offerings In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

You also carried Sikkuth your king And Chiun, your idols, The star of your gods, Which you made for yourselves.

You have not brought Me the sheep for your burnt offerings, Nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not caused you to serve with grain offerings, Nor wearied you with incense.

For forty years I was grieved with [that] generation, And said, 'It [is] a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.'

Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years.

while it is said: "Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

Now with whom was He angry forty years? [Was it] not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?