[6:1] The people say, “Let's return to the Lord! He has hurt us, but he will be sure to heal us; he has wounded us, but he will bandage our wounds, won't he?
[6:2] In two or three days he will revive us, and we will live in his presence.
[6:3] Let us try to know the Lord. He will come to us as surely as the day dawns, as surely as the spring rains fall upon the earth.”
[6:4] But the Lord says, “Israel and Judah, what am I going to do with you? Your love for me disappears as quickly as morning mist; it is like dew, that vanishes early in the day.
[6:5] That is why I have sent my prophets to you with my message of judgment and destruction. What I want from you is plain and clear:
[6:6] I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me.
[6:7] “But as soon as they entered the land at Adam, they broke the covenant I had made with them.
[6:8] Gilead is a city full of evil people and murderers.
[6:9] The priests are like a gang of robbers who wait in ambush for someone. Even on the road to the holy place at Shechem they commit murder. And they do all this evil deliberately!
[6:10] I have seen a horrible thing in Israel: my people have defiled themselves by worshiping idols.
[6:11] “And as for you, people of Judah, I have set a time to punish you also for what you are doing.
[7:1] “Whenever I want to heal my people Israel and make them prosperous again, all I can see is their wickedness and the evil they do. They cheat one another; they break into houses and steal; they rob people in the streets.
[7:2] It never enters their heads that I will remember all this evil; but their sins surround them, and I cannot avoid seeing them.”