This “utterance” went straight to the point in showing what was back of Judah’s troubles​—false religion! For Jehovah went on to say:

“I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off from this place the remaining ones of the Baal, the name of the foreign-god priests along with the priests,

Zeph. 1:2-6.

5. (a) Why did Baalism have no rightful place among God’s people? (b) What detestable practices did it include?

⁵ What wickedness! Those Judeans had abandoned the pure worship of Jehovah to follow the Baalism of surrounding nations. Baalism​—with its human sacrifices, its ritual prostitution, its worship of dumb idols and its formalistic prayers for material prosperity—​had no rightful place among Jehovah’s worshipers. (Num. 25:1-5; Jer. 7:30, 31; 11:17; 19:3-5) False religion had led them into all kinds of wrong practices. Judah’s priests had violated the First Commandment by fellowshiping with “foreign-god priests.” (Ex. 20:2, 3)