Bible Verses About Idolatry

I will expose your [so-called] 'righteousness'; and what you have done won't help you.

When you cry, will those [idols] you gathered rescue you? The wind will carry them all away, a puff of air will take them off. But whoever takes refuge in me will possess the land and inherit my holy mountain."

a people who provoke me to my face all the time, sacrificing in gardens and burning incense on bricks.

They sit among the graves and spend the night in caverns; they eat pig meat and their pots hold soup made from disgusting things.

because I will summon all the families in the kingdoms of the north," says ADONAI, "and they will come and sit, each one, on his throne at the entrance to the gates of Yerushalayim, opposite its walls, all the way around, and opposite all the cities of Y'hudah.

I will pronounce my judgments against them for all their wickedness in abandoning me, offering incense to other gods and worshipping what their own hands made.

"So again I state my case against you," says ADONAI, "and state it against your grandchildren too.

Cross to the coasts of the Kitti'im and look; send to Kedar and observe closely; see if anything like this has happened before:

has a nation ever exchanged its gods (and theirs are not gods at all!)? Yet my people have exchanged their Glory for something without value.

Be aghast at this, you heavens! Shudder in absolute horror!" says ADONAI.

"For my people have committed two evils: they have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, and dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water!

[ADONAI] says: "If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and marries another man, then if the first one marries her again, that land will be completely defiled. But you prostituted yourself to many lovers, yet you want to return to me?" says ADONAI.

"Raise your eyes to the bare hills, take a look: where have you not had sex? You sat by the roadsides waiting for them like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.

For this reason the showers have been withheld, there has been no rain in the spring; still you maintain a whore's brazen look and refuse to be ashamed.

Didn't you just now cry to me, 'My father, you are my friend from my youth'?

[thinking,] 'He won't bear a grudge forever, will he? He wouldn't maintain it right to the end.' You say this, but you keep doing evil things, you just do whatever you want."

In the days of Yoshiyahu the king, ADONAI asked me, "Have you seen the things that backsliding Isra'el has been doing? She goes up on every bare hill and under every green tree and prostitutes herself there.

I said that after she had done all these things, she would return to me; but she hasn't returned. Meanwhile, her unfaithful sister Y'hudah has been watching.

I saw that even though backsliding Isra'el had committed adultery, so that I had sent her away and given her a divorce document, unfaithful Y'hudah her sister was not moved to fear - instead she too went and prostituted herself.

The ease with which Isra'el prostituted herself defiled the land, as she committed adultery with stones and with logs.

Yet in spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Y'hudah has not returned to me wholeheartedly; she only makes a pretense of it," said ADONAI.

Then ADONAI said to me, "Backsliding Isra'el has proved herself more righteous than unfaithful Y'hudah.

"Roam the streets of Yerushalayim look around, observe and ask in its open spaces: if you can find anyone (if there is anyone!) who acts with justice and seeks the truth, I will pardon her.

And though they say, 'As ADONAI lives,' the fact is that they are swearing falsely."

ADONAI, your eyes look for truth. You struck them, but they weren't affected; you [nearly] destroyed them, but they refused correction. They made their faces harder than rock, refusing to repent.