1 A saying:
2 “Look at the bare hills, and see.
3 So the rain has been withheld, and there have been no spring showers.
4 But now you are calling to me.
5 He won’t hold a grudge forever.
6 When Josiah was king, the Lord asked me, “Did you see what unfaithful Israel did? She went up every high mountain and under every large tree, and she acted like a prostitute there.
7 I thought that after she had done all this that she would come back to me. But she didn’t come back, and her treacherous sister Judah saw her.
8 Judah saw that I sent unfaithful Israel away because of her adultery and that I gave Israel her divorce papers. But treacherous Judah, her sister, wasn’t afraid. She also acted like a prostitute.
9 Because she wasn’t concerned about acting like a prostitute, she polluted the land and committed adultery with standing stones and wood pillars.
10 Even after all this, Israel’s treacherous sister Judah didn’t wholeheartedly come back to me. She was deceitful,” declares the Lord.
11 Then the Lord said to me, “Unfaithful Israel was less guilty than treacherous Judah.
12 Go and proclaim these things to the north:
13 Admit that you’ve done wrong!
14 “Come back, you rebellious people,” declares the Lord. “I’m your husband. I will take you, one from every city and two from every family, and bring you to Zion.
15 I will give you shepherds after my own heart. They will be shepherds who feed you with knowledge and insight.
16 In those days you will be fertile, and your population will increase in the land,” declares the Lord. “People will no longer talk about the ark of the Lord’s promise. It will no longer come to mind. They won’t remember it, miss it, or make another one.
17 At that time they will call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord. All nations will gather in Jerusalem because the name of the Lord will be found there. They will no longer follow their own stubborn, evil ways.
18 In those days the nation of Judah will live with the nation of Israel. They will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave their ancestors as their own property.
19 “I wanted to treat you like children
20 But like a wife who betrays her husband,
21 The sound of crying is heard on the hills.
22 “Come back, you rebellious people,
23 Truly, the noise from the hills, from the mountains,
24 Ever since we were young,
25 We must lie down in our shame