21-22 “Set up signposts to mark your trip home.Get a good map.Study the road conditions.The road out is the road back.Come back, dear virgin Israel,come back to your hometowns.How long will you flit here and there, indecisive?How long before you make up your fickle mind?God will create a new thing in this land:A transformed woman will embrace the transforming God!”
23-24 A Message from Israel’s God-of-the-Angel-Armies: “When I’ve turned everything around and brought my people back, the old expressions will be heard on the streets: ‘God bless you!’ . . . ‘O True Home!’ . . . ‘O Holy Mountain!’ All Judah’s people, whether in town or country, will get along just fine with each other.
25 I’ll refresh tired bodies;I’ll restore tired souls.
26 Just then I woke up and looked around—what a pleasant and satisfying sleep!
27-28 “Be ready. The time’s coming”—God’s Decree—“when I will plant people and animals in Israel and Judah, just as a farmer plants seed. And in the same way that earlier I relentlessly pulled up and tore down, took apart and demolished, so now I am sticking with them as they start over, building and planting.
29 “When that time comes you won’t hear the old proverb anymore,Parents ate the green apples,their children got the stomachache.
30 “No, each person will pay for his own sin. You eat green apples, you’re the one who gets sick.