If you ask why all this has happened to you---why your clothes have been torn off and you have been raped---it is because your sin is so terrible.

So then, you will serve the enemies that the LORD is going to send against you. You will be hungry, thirsty, and naked---in need of everything. The LORD will oppress you harshly until you are destroyed.

Three years earlier the LORD had told Isaiah son of Amoz to take off his sandals and the sackcloth he was wearing. He obeyed and went around naked and barefoot.

The emperor of Assyria will lead away naked the prisoners he captures from those two countries. Young and old, they will walk barefoot and naked, with their buttocks exposed, bringing shame on Egypt.

They let their babies die of hunger and thirst; children are begging for food that no one will give them.

If she does not, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born. I will make her like a dry and barren land, and she will die of thirst.

But the father called to his servants. 'Hurry!' he said. 'Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet.

So he called out, 'Father Abraham! Take pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip his finger in some water and cool off my tongue, because I am in great pain in this fire!'

They will answer, 'No, why should we? We will all be just as stubborn and evil as we want to be.' "

You wear yourselves out looking for other gods, but you never give up. You think your obscene idols give you strength, and so you never grow weak.

Only admit that you are guilty and that you have rebelled against the LORD, your God. Confess that under every green tree you have given your love to foreign gods and that you have not obeyed my commands. I, the LORD, have spoken.

O God, you have forsaken your people, the descendants of Jacob! The land is full of magic practices from the East and from Philistia. The people follow foreign customs.

We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven, and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles.

Make sure that there is no one here today who hears these solemn demands and yet convinces himself that all will be well with him, even if he stubbornly goes his own way. That would destroy all of you, good and evil alike.

The LORD will not forgive such a man. Instead, the LORD's burning anger will flame up against him, and all the disasters written in this book will fall on him until the LORD has destroyed him completely.

Their idolatry made the LORD jealous; the evil they did made him angry.

When his troubles were at their worst, that man Ahaz sinned against the LORD more than ever.

Or perhaps you despise his great kindness, tolerance, and patience. Surely you know that God is kind, because he is trying to lead you to repent.

But you have a hard and stubborn heart, and so you are making your own punishment even greater on the Day when God's anger and righteous judgments will be revealed.

For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see?