Jeremiah 3

1 “If a man divorces his wife and she becomes another man’s wife, will she return to him again? Would she not be completely defiled? Yet you went whoring with many shepherds — and would you return to me? says the Lord.”

2 “Lift your eyes and look straight ahead: where have you not been defiled? You sat waiting for them beside the roads like a lonely crow, and you defiled the land with your whoring and your wickedness.”

3 “You kept many shepherds, to your own hurt. You had a whore’s face; you refused to be ashamed before anyone.”

4 “Did you not call me your home, your father, the guide of your girlhood?”

5 “Will his anger last forever? Will it be kept up to the end? Look — you spoke like this, and then you did these evil things, and you carried them through.”

6 And the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king:

“Have you seen what the house of Israel did to me? They went up on every high mountain and under every leafy tree, and they whored there.”

7 “And after she had whored in all these ways, I said, ‘Return to me’ — but she did not return. And faithless Judah saw her faithlessness.”

8 “And I saw that for all the adultery the house of Israel was caught in, I sent her away and put a certificate of divorce into her hands. Yet faithless Judah was not afraid; she went and whored as well.”

9 “Her whoring counted as nothing to her, and she committed adultery with wood and stone.”

10 “And after all this, faithless Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but with a lie.”

11 And the Lord said to me:

“Israel has shown himself more in the right than faithless Judah.”

12 “Go and read these words toward the north, and say: Return to me, house of Israel, says the Lord, and I will not set my face against you; for I am merciful, says the Lord, and I will not hold my anger against you forever.”

13 “Only acknowledge your wrongdoing — that you were ungodly toward the Lord your God, and scattered your ways to strangers under every leafy tree, and did not listen to my voice, says the Lord.”

14 “Turn back, you children who have deserted, says the Lord, for I will be your master. I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”

15 “And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and they will shepherd you with understanding.”

16 “And when you multiply and increase in the land in those days, says the Lord, they will no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the Holy One of Israel.’ It will not come to mind; it will not be named or missed; and it will not be made again.”

17 “In those days and at that time they will call Jerusalem the Throne of the Lord, and all the nations will be gathered to her, and they will no longer walk after the devisings of their own evil hearts.”

18 “In those days the house of Judah will join the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north and from all the countries to the land that I gave their fathers to inherit.”

19 “And I said, ‘So be it, Lord’ — for I will set you among children and give you a choice land, the inheritance of the Almighty God of the nations. And I said, ‘You will call me Father, and you will not turn away from me.’”

20 “But as a wife breaks faith with the man who lives with her, so the house of Israel has broken faith with me, says the Lord.”

21 “A voice was heard from lips — the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel — because they did wrong in their ways and forgot God, their Holy One.”

22 “Turn back, you turning children, and I will heal what is broken in you. — Look, we will be your slaves, for you are the Lord our God.”

23 “Truly the hills were a lie, and the strength of the mountains too. Only through the Lord our God is the rescue of Israel.”

24 “But shame has devoured what our fathers worked for, from our youth on — their sheep and their calves, their sons and their daughters.”

25 “We lay down in our shame, and our disgrace covered us, because we and our fathers have sinned before our God from our youth until this day, and we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God.”