Thus says the LORD, "What unrighteousness have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?

Yet I had planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then have you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me?

"Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst. But you said, 'It is in vain. No, for I have loved strangers, and I will go after them.'

"I have struck your children in vain. They received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.

Truly in vain is help from the hills, the tumult on the mountains. Truly the salvation of Israel is in the LORD our God.

You, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with scarlet, though you dress yourselves with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with paint, in vain do you make yourself beautiful; your lovers despise you, they seek your life.

Thus says the LORD of hosts, "They shall thoroughly glean the remnant of Israel like a vine. Pass your hand again as a grape gatherer into the baskets."

The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed of the fire: in vain do they go on refining; for the wicked are not plucked away.

I will utterly consume them, says the LORD: no grapes shall be on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.'"

I have winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land; I have bereaved them of children, I have destroyed my people; they did not return from their ways.

But they say, 'It is in vain; for we will walk after our own devices, and we will do everyone after the stubbornness of his evil heart.'"

Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams,' says the LORD, 'and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their vain boasting: yet I did not send them, nor commanded them; neither do they profit this people at all,' says the LORD.

Go up into Gilead, and take balm, virgin daughter of Egypt: in vain do you use many medicines; there is no healing for you.

With more than the weeping of Jazer will I weep for you, vine of Sibmah: your branches passed over the sea, they reached even to the sea of Jazer: on your summer fruits and on your vintage the destroyer is fallen.

For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they shall set themselves in array against her; from there she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of an expert mighty man; none shall return in vain.