⁵ because you’re not going to a people whose speech you cannot understand or whose language is difficult to speak. Instead, you’re going to the house of Israel. ⁶ This isn’t a large group of people whose speech is unintelligible to you or whose language is difficult for you to comprehend. Frankly, if I had sent you to that kind of people,^[a] they would certainly have listened to you! ⁷ But the house of Israel won’t listen to you, since they weren’t willing to listen to me. That’s because the entire house of Israel is hard-headed and hard-hearted.