Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
Parallel translations
- WEB How well you prepare your way to seek love! Therefore you have even taught the wicked women your ways.
- BSB How skillfully you pursue love! Even the most immoral of women could learn from your ways.
- ESV “How well you direct your course to seek love! So that even to wicked women you have taught your ways.
- NKJV “Why do you beautify your way to seek love? Therefore you have also taught The wicked women your ways.
- NASB “How well you prepare your way To seek love! Therefore even to the wicked women You have taught your ways.
- NLT “How you plot and scheme to win your lovers. Even an experienced prostitute could learn from you!
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Israel has become skilled in pursuing illicit love, even teaching others evil. Their corruption has become expert and contagious.
Overview
Yahweh says Israel has become so adept at seeking 'love' through idolatry that they could instruct even wicked women in their ways. Sin has matured into a practiced craft that corrupts others. This shows how unfaithfulness, left unchecked, spreads its influence rather than staying contained.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Isa 57:7–10Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice.
- Ezek 16:47Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.
- Ezek 16:51–52Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.
- Jer 2:23How canst thou say, I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways;
- Jer 3:1–2They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.
- 2 Chr 33:9So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel.
- Jer 2:36Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
- Ezek 16:27Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.
- Hos 2:5–7For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.
- Hos 2:13And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the LORD.
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Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 2:33 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.