¹⁴ I will not give punishment to your daughters or your brides for their evil behaviour; for they make themselves separate with loose women, and make offerings with those who are used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods: the people who have no wisdom will be sent away.

¹ Give ear to the word of the Lord, O children of Israel; for the Lord has a cause against the people of this land, because there is no good faith in it, and no mercy and no knowledge of God in the land.

⁸ But if you have not that punishment of which we all have our part, then you are not true sons, but children of shame.

¹⁸ Whose thoughts are dark, to whom the life of God is strange because they are without knowledge, and their hearts have been made hard;

¹⁶ Or do you not see that he who is joined to a loose woman is one body with her? for God has said, The two of them will become one flesh.

¹¹ Not one who has the knowledge of what is right, not one who is a searcher after God;

⁴³ Why are my words not clear to you? It is because your ears are shut to my teaching.

⁹ As for Ephraim, what has he to do with false gods any longer? I have given an answer and I will keep watch over him; I am like a branching fir-tree, from me comes your fruit.

¹⁷ Ephraim is joined to false gods; let him be.

⁵ You will not be able to keep on your feet by day, and by night the prophet will be falling down with you, and I will give your mother to destruction.

⁶ Destruction has overtaken my people because they have no knowledge; because you have given up knowledge, I will give you up, so that you will be no priest to me, because you have not kept in mind the law of your God, I will not keep your children in my memory.

¹⁰ Till a number are tested and make themselves clean; and the evil-doers will do evil; for not one of the evil-doers will have knowledge; but all will be made clear to those who are wise.

¹¹ Yes, the dogs are for ever looking for food; while these, the keepers of the sheep, are without wisdom: they have all gone after their pleasure, every one looking for profit; they are all the same.

¹⁸ They have no knowledge or wisdom; for he has put a veil over their eyes, so that they may not see; and on their hearts, so that they may not give attention.

¹⁹ And no one takes note, no one has enough knowledge or wisdom to say, I have put part of it in the fire, and made bread on it; I have had a meal of the flesh cooked with it: and am I now to make the rest of it into a false god? am I to go down on my face before a bit of wood?

²⁰ As for him whose food is the dust of a dead fire, he has been turned from the way by a twisted mind, so that he is unable to keep himself safe by saying, What I have here in my hand is false.

⁵ Why will you have more and more punishment? why keep on in your evil ways? Every head is tired and every heart is feeble.

⁵ Evil men have no knowledge of what is right; but those who go after the Lord have knowledge of all things.

⁷ And he had the houses pulled down of those who were used for sex purposes in the house of the Lord, where women were making robes for the Asherah.

¹² Those used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods he sent out of the country, and he took away all the images which his fathers had made.

²³ For they made high places and upright stones and wood pillars on every high hill and under every green tree;

²⁴ And more than this, there were those in the land who were used for sex purposes in the worship of the gods, doing the same disgusting crimes as the nations which the Lord had sent out before the children of Israel.

¹⁷ No daughter of Israel is to let herself be used as a loose woman for a strange god, and no son of Israel is to give himself to a man.