22 Even if you wash yourself with soap, and increase your use of herbal soaps, you are still stained by your iniquity in my sight, says the Lord God.
23 How can you say: 'I have not been polluted. I have not walked after Baal?' Consider your ways in the steep valley. Acknowledge what you have done, so that you may be like a swift runner, following his course.
24 A wild donkey accustomed to solitude, out of the desire in his soul, caught the scent of his lover. Now nothing will turn him away from her. All those who seek her will not cease. But they will find her in her menstruation.
25 You should keep your foot from being naked, and your throat from being thirsty. But you have said: 'I have lost hope. I will not do it. For certainly, I have loved strangers, and I will walk after them.'
26 In the same way that a thief is confounded when he has been apprehended, so the house of Israel has been confounded, they and their kings, their leaders and priests and prophets.
27 For they say to a piece of wood, 'You are my father,' and to a stone, 'You have conceived me.' They have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their affliction, they will say: 'Rise up and deliver us.'
28 Where are your gods that you made for yourselves? Let them rise up and deliver you in the time of your affliction. For certainly, your gods were like the number of your cities, O Judah.