Jeremiah 44:17

¹⁸The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

³⁴Also our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them.

¹⁹whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things.

²³You shall observe and do that which has gone out of your lips. Whatever you have vowed to the LORD your God as a free will offering, which you have promised with your mouth, you must do.

²⁵The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘You and your wives have both spoken with your mouths, and with your hands have fulfilled it, saying, “We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her.” “‘Establish then your vows, and perform your vows.’

⁵For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done 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.’ ⁶Therefore behold, ^[+] I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way. ⁷She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.’ ⁸For she didn’t know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. ⁹Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my new wine in its season, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness.

¹⁶They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made molten images for themselves, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served Baal.

⁸“‘“But they rebelled against me and wouldn’t listen to me. They didn’t all throw away the abominations of their eyes. They also didn’t forsake the idols of Egypt. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the middle of the land of Egypt.

²¹“The incense that you burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, didn’t the LORD remember them, and didn’t it come into his mind?

³and the children of Israel said to them, “We wish that we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, when we ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”