“Neither has she left her whoredoms since the days of Egypt, for in her youth they lay with her, and they bruised the teats of her virginity, and they poured out their whoredoms on her. This is why I delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians on whom she doted. These discovered her nakedness. They took her sons and her daughters, and her they slew with the sword and she became a byword among women, for they executed judgments on her.”
Since the days of Egypt Israel had never known a period of pure innocence. She had been sinful and unfaithful to God in Egypt, she was sinful and unfaithful in the wilderness, she continued sinful and unfaithful through the Book of Judges, and she had continued so to the end. She had constantly given herself to idolatry and all the evils that accompanied it, and that was why Yahweh had allowed her to become the plaything of the Assyrians. These treated her as badly as men treat low prostitutes. They took everything from her, her land, her people, her villages. She herself was put to the sword and she became the laughingstock of the nations because of what she suffered. Indeed her name became a byword.