just an occasionally disobedient child, or a sporadically flirtatious wife. They had shown a persistent, wilful and incorrigible determination to disregard the covenant requirements of Yahweh and an unstoppable downward drift towards, and sinking below, the levels of wickedness to be found among the non-covenant nations. The problem lay not just in their behaviour, but in the source of their behaviour—the attitudes and mentality that characterized them. In short, the problem was in their ‘heart’