3 You sinned, so the rain has not come. There has not been any springtime rains. But still you refuse to be ashamed. The look on your face is like that of a prostitute who refuses to be ashamed.
4 But didn’t you just call me ‘Father’? Didn’t you say, ‘You have been my friend since I was a child’?
5 You also said, ‘God will not always be angry with me. His anger will not continue forever.’ “Judah, you say that, but you do as much evil as you can.”
6 The Lord spoke to me during the time King Josiah was ruling the nation of Judah. He said, “Jeremiah, you saw the bad things Israel did! You saw how she was unfaithful to me. She was unfaithful to me with every idol on every hill and under every green tree.
7 I said to myself, ‘Israel will come back to me after she has finished doing these evil things.’ But she did not come back to me. And Israel’s unfaithful sister, Judah, saw what she did.
8 Israel was unfaithful, and she knew why I sent her away. Israel knew that I divorced her because she committed the sin of adultery. But that did not make her unfaithful sister afraid. Judah was not afraid. She also went out and acted like a prostitute.
9 Judah did not care that she was acting like a prostitute. So she made her country ‘dirty.’ She committed the sin of adultery by worshiping idols made out of stone and wood.