" How shall I pardon you for this? Your children have forsaken Me And sworn by [those that are] not gods. When I had fed them to the full, Then they committed adultery And assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.

"Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know,

"and [then] come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, 'We are delivered to do all these abominations'?

Oh, that I had in the wilderness A lodging place for travelers; That I might leave my people, And go from them! For they [are] all adulterers, An assembly of treacherous men.

"One commits abomination with his neighbor's wife; another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law; and another in you violates his sister, his father's daughter.

But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

"A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And He left them and departed.

Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, [Is it] not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, [Is it] not evil? Offer it then to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favorably?" Says the LORD of hosts.

"But cursed [be] the deceiver Who has in his flock a male, And takes a vow, But sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished -- For I [am] a great King," Says the LORD of hosts, "And My name [is to be] feared among the nations.

"Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings.

Then He taught, saying to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it a 'den of thieves.' "