Jeremiah 3:21

²“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness.

⁹They will come with weeping. I will lead them with petitions. I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they won’t stumble; for I am a father to Israel. Ephraim is my firstborn.

³²“Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me for days without number.

¹⁰For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, which brings no regret. But the sorrow of the world produces death.

²They have gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep. Moab wails over Nebo and over Medeba. Baldness is on all of their heads. Every beard is cut off.

¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not remembered the rock of your strength. Therefore you plant pleasant plants, and set out foreign seedlings.

⁴“In those days, and in that time,” says the LORD, “the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together; they will go on their way weeping, and will seek the LORD their God. ⁵They will inquire concerning Zion with their faces turned toward it, saying, ‘Come, and join yourselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.’

¹⁵Why do you cry over your injury? Your pain is incurable. For the greatness of your iniquity, because your sins have increased, I have done these things to you. ¹⁶Therefore all those who devour you will be devoured. All your adversaries, everyone of them, will go into captivity. Those who plunder you will be plunder. I will make all who prey on you become prey. ¹⁷For I will restore health to you, and I will heal you of your wounds,” says the LORD, “because they have called you an outcast, saying, ‘It is Zion, whom no man seeks after.’”

¹⁸“I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned, for you are the LORD my God. ¹⁹Surely after that I was turned. I repented. After that I was instructed. I struck my thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I bore the reproach of my youth.’ ²⁰Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I still earnestly remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him,” says the LORD.

⁹He who walks blamelessly walks surely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out.