Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, Neither am I her husband; And let her put away her prostitution from her face, And her adulteries from between her breasts;
"And let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts ..." Jamieson's comment on this is that, "Her unblushing countenance betrayed her lust, as did also her exposed breasts."[9]  The people who are to contend with Israel with a view to her reformation are the faithful remnant of the nation.  As Dummelow noted, "The people, here, are sometimes the children (as in this verse) but more generally the wife."[10]  Israel had forgotten God, forsaken his teachings, and adopted the shameless worship of the old fertility god, "Baal."  While probably true that many of the old forms, festivals and ceremonies of the true Mosaic religion were still observed, they had been entertwined and obscured by the sensuous and licentious paganism of the old Canaanites, even the very name of the true God being perverted to "Baal." This horrible worship had been made the official religion of the state of Israel by Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who brought with her from her native Tyre the Sidonian paganism.