But the people of Jerusalem said, "The LORD has abandoned us! He has forgotten us."

No longer will you be called "Forsaken," Or your land be called "The Deserted Wife." Your new name will be "God Is Pleased with Her." Your land will be called "Happily Married," Because the LORD is pleased with you And will be like a husband to your land.

So call your fellow Israelites "God's People" and "Loved-by-the-Lord."

My children, plead with your mother---though she is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and prostitution.

So I am going to take her into the desert again; there I will win her back with words of love.

I will give back to her the vineyards she had and make Trouble Valley a door of hope. She will respond to me there as she did when she was young, when she came from Egypt.

"Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.

But God, who encourages the downhearted, encouraged us with the coming of Titus.

But now I am happy---not because I made you sad, but because your sadness made you change your ways. That sadness was used by God, and so we caused you no harm.

For the sadness that is used by God brings a change of heart that leads to salvation---and there is no regret in that! But sadness that is merely human causes death.

So be happy with your wife and find your joy with the woman you married---

Enjoy life with the one you love, as long as you live the useless life that God has given you in this world. Enjoy every useless day of it, because that is all you will get for all your trouble.

You ask why he no longer accepts them. It is because he knows you have broken your promise to the wife you married when you were young. She was your partner, and you have broken your promise to her, although you promised before God that you would be faithful to her.