²³ Who is there among you who will give ear to this? who will give attention to it for the time to come?

¹⁸ If only you had given ear to my orders, then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea:

² So that you may give the rest of your lives in the flesh, not to the desires of men, but to the purpose of God.

³ Because for long enough, in times past, we have been living after the way of the Gentiles, given up to the desires of the flesh, to drinking and feasting and loose behaviour and unclean worship of images;

²² For Moses said, The Lord will give you a prophet from among your people, like me; you will give ear to everything which he will say to you.

²³ And every soul who does not give attention to that prophet, will be cut off from among the people.

¹⁹ So then, let your hearts be changed and be turned to God, so that your sins may be completely taken away, and times of blessing may come from the Lord;

²⁸ But how does it seem to you? A man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go and do work today in the vine-garden.

²⁹ And he said in answer, I will not: but later, changing his decision, he went.

³⁰ And he came to the second and said the same. And he made answer and said, I go, sir: and went not.

³¹ Which of the two did his father's pleasure? They say, The first. Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, that tax-farmers and loose women are going into the kingdom of God before you.

⁹ The voice of the Lord is crying out to the town: Give ear, you tribes and the meeting of the town.

¹³ Only be conscious of your sin, the evil you have done against the Lord your God; you have gone with strange men under every branching tree, giving no attention to my voice, says the Lord.

⁴ Will you not, from this time, make your prayer to me, crying, My father, you are the friend of my early years?

⁵ Will he be angry for ever? will he keep his wrath to the end? These things you have said, and have done evil and have had your way.

⁶ And the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen what Israel, turning away from me, has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every branching tree, acting like a loose woman there.

⁷ And I said, After she has done all these things she will come back to me; but she did not. And her false sister Judah saw it.

¹⁸ Come now, and let us have an argument together, says the Lord: how may your sins which are red like blood be white as snow? how may their dark purple seem like wool?

¹⁹ If you will give ear to my word and do it, the good things of the land will be yours;

²⁰ But if your hearts are turned against me, I will send destruction on you by the sword; so the Lord has said.

²² How long, you simple ones, will foolish things be dear to you? and pride a delight to the haters of authority? how long will the foolish go on hating knowledge?

²³ Be turned again by my sharp words: see, I will send the flow of my spirit on you, and make my words clear to you.

²⁹ If only they were wise, if only this was clear to them, and they would give thought to their future!

²⁹ But if in those lands you are turned again to the Lord your God, searching for him with all your heart and soul, he will not keep himself from you.

³⁰ When you are in trouble and all these things have come on you, if, in the future, you are turned again to the Lord your God, and give ear to his voice:

³¹ Because the Lord your God is a God of mercy, he will not take away his help from you or let destruction overtake you, or be false to the agreement which he made by an oath with your fathers.

⁴⁰ And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me;

⁴¹ So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins,

⁴² Then I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will keep in mind the land.