Spiritual betrayal and moral collapse are intimately connected. When a nation abandons its devotion to God in favor of foreign worship, the corruption inevitably seeps into the most intimate spaces of the family, shattering marital fidelity and personal morality.
Rather than traveling to the Temple to offer their sacrifices, the people chose to conduct their rituals at idolatrous sites immersed in nature [אברבנאל]. This worship was divided by location and scale. The highest mountain peaks served as the stage for the central, public slaughtering of sacrifices, drawing large crowds. In contrast, the lower hills were reserved for a secondary, more personal form of worship involving the burning of incense [מלבי״ם, רד״ק]. To facilitate this, they either directed the priests of Baal to sacrifice on their behalf in plain sight [אבן עזרא], or they themselves engaged in a constant, excessive routine of offering sacrifices [רד״ק].
These rituals took place under specific trees that were highly favored in the idolatrous practices of the era [מצודת ציון]. The people gathered beneath the acorn-bearing oak, the poplar with its distinctive white bark or fruit, and the thick, heavily branched terebinth [רש״י, רד״ק, אברבנאל]. These specific trees were chosen because they cast a broad, dense shade, creating a comfortable environment to stand and perform the rituals [מצודת דוד, רד״ק]. Yet, there is a deeper symbolism in this choice. By selecting barren trees rather than those that yield sweet, nourishing fruit like the vine or the fig tree, the people unknowingly reflected the inherent emptiness and ultimate futility of the idolatry they were practicing [אברבנאל].
As a direct result of this spiritual degradation, betrayal infiltrated their personal lives [ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Commentators offer two primary explanations for how the idolatry of the men directly fueled the promiscuity of the women. The first approach points to a practical consequence: as the fathers and husbands left the cities to worship idols on the mountains and hills, the women were left at home alone and unsupervised. This prolonged absence provided both the time and the perfect opportunity for them to engage in secret affairs [אבן עזרא, מצודת דוד, רד״ק]. The second approach views this moral decay as a product of cultural assimilation. Embracing idolatry meant adopting foreign lifestyles and engaging in intermarriage. Consequently, the daughters born to these foreign women simply mirrored the corrupt traditions of their mothers, continuing a cycle of promiscuity [רש״י, אברבנאל].
This breakdown in morality affected the women differently depending on their marital status. Unmarried daughters would venture outside to act promiscuously, straying completely from the proper path. Meanwhile, the married daughters-in-law remained in their homes but succumbed to their lust, committing the far more severe sin of adultery. The moral deterioration reached such depths that acts of adultery and forbidden relations became normalized and public, entirely stripped of any sense of shame [מלבי״ם].