“Why do you beautify your way to seek love? Therefore you have also taught The wicked women your ways.
Parallel translations
- WEB How well you prepare your way to seek love! Therefore you have even taught the wicked women your ways.
- KJV Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy 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.
- 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 57:7–10On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed. You also went up there to offer sacrifice.
- Ezek 16:47Yet you have not walked in their ways, nor done after their abominations; but, soon you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.
- Ezek 16:51–52Neither has Samaria committed half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters by all your abominations which you have done.
- Jer 2:23“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled. I have not gone after the Baals’? See your way in the valley. Know what you have done. You are a swift dromedary traversing her ways;
- Jer 3:1–2“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says Yahweh.
- 2 Chr 33:9Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that they did more evil than the nations whom Yahweh destroyed before the children of Israel did.
- Jer 2:36Why do you go about so much to change your ways? You will be ashamed of Egypt also, as you were ashamed of Assyria.
- Ezek 16:27See therefore, I have stretched out my hand over you, and have diminished your portion, and delivered you to the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who are ashamed of your lewd way.
- Hos 2:5–7For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
- Hos 2:13I will visit on her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me,” says Yahweh.
Resources, by level
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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.