9. Therefore I again bring a lawsuit against you,” declares Yahweh, “and with your children I bring a lawsuit.
10. For go over to the coasts of Cyprus and look, and send to Kedar and consider very closely, and see if there has been a thing like this:
11. Has a nation exchanged gods? And they are not gods! But my people have exchanged their glory for that which does not profit.
12. Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder; be utterly desolate,” declares Yahweh.
13. “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the source of living water, to hew out for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
14. Is Israel a slave? Or a slave born in a house? Why has he become plunder?
15. The young lions have roared against him, they have raised their voices. And they have made his land as horror; his cities are destroyed, without an inhabitant.
16. Moreover, people of Memphis and Tahpanhes will shave your skull.
17. Did you not do this to yourself, by forsaking Yahweh, your God, at the time of your leading in the way?
18. And now why do you go the way of Egypt to drink the waters of the Shihor? And why do you go the way of Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates?
19. Your wickedness will chastise you, and your apostasies will reprove you. Therefore know and see that it is evil and bitter, your forsaking of Yahweh, your God, and fear of me is not in you,” declares the Lord, Yahweh of hosts.
20. “For from long ago you have broken your yoke, you tore to pieces your bonds. And you said, ‘I will not serve!’ But on every high hill and under every leafy tree you were lying down as a prostitute.
21. Yet I planted you as a choice vine, all of it a seed of trustworthiness. How then have you altered before me into something that is degenerate, the foreign vine?