Jeremiah 2:25

“You were tired out by the length of your road, Yet you did not say, ‘It is hopeless.’ You found renewed strength; Therefore you did not faint.

“O generation, behold the word of Yahweh. Have I been a wilderness to Israel Or a land of thick darkness? Why do My people say, ‘We are free to roam; We will no longer come to You’?

‘Only acknowledge your iniquity, That you have transgressed against Yahweh your God And have scattered your ways of harlotry to the strangers under every green tree, And you have not listened to My voice,’ declares Yahweh.

“What will you say when He appoints over you— And you yourself had taught them— Former companions to be head over you? Will not pangs seize you Like a woman in childbirth?

Thus says Yahweh to this people, “Even so they have loved to wander; they have not kept their feet in check. Therefore Yahweh does not accept them; now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.”

“But they will say, ‘It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’

“Go up to Lebanon and cry out, And lift up your voice in Bashan; Cry out also from Abarim, For all your lovers have been broken.

She weeps bitterly in the night, And her tears are on her cheeks; She has none to comfort her Among all her lovers. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; They have become her enemies.

“And what comes upon your spirit will not happen, when you say: ‘We will be like the nations, like the families of the lands, to minister to wood and stone.’

“For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

“You have said, ‘It is worthless to serve God; and what gain is it that we have kept His charge and that we have walked in mourning before Yahweh of hosts?