2 They will be spread out and exposed to the sun, the moon and the stars. These are things they adored and served, things to which they paid allegiance, from which they sought guidance, and worshiped. The bones of these people will never be regathered and reburied. They will be like manure used to fertilize the ground.
3 However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” says the Lord who rules over all.
4 The Lord said to me, “Tell them, ‘The Lord says,Do people not get back up when they fall down?Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way?
5 Why, then, do these people of Jerusalemcontinually turn away from me in apostasy?They hold fast to their deception.They refuse to turn back to me.
6 I have listened to them very carefully,but they do not speak honestly.None of them regrets the evil he has done.None of them says, “I have done wrong!”All of them persist in their own wayward courselike a horse charging recklessly into battle.
7 Even the stork knows when it is time to move on.The turtledove, swallow, and cranerecognize the normal times for their migration.But my people pay no attentionto what I, the Lord, require of them.
8 How can you say, “We are wise!We have the law of the Lord”?The truth is, those who teach it have used their writingsto make it say what it does not really mean.