Evil in the Land
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 c“Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: dAmend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’
5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly eexecute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods fto your own harm, 7 gthen I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is hcalled by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a iden of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. 12 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, jwhere I made my name dwell at first, and see kwhat I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you lpersistently you did not listen, and mwhen I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore nI will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
16 “As for you, odo not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the pcities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make qcakes for the rqueen of heaven. And they pour out sdrink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. 19 Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? 20 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be tpoured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”
21 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, uand eat the flesh. 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, vI did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and wI will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, xthat it may be well with you.’ 24 But ythey did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the zstubbornness of their evil hearts, and went abackward and not forward. 25 From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. 26 bYet cthey did not listen to me or incline their ear, but dstiffened their neck. eThey did worse than their fathers.
27 “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.
29 f“‘Cut off your hair and cast it away;
graise a lamentation on the bare heights,
for the Lord has rejected and forsaken
the generation of his wrath.’
The Valley of Slaughter
30 “For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. hThey have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. 31 And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, ito burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, jwhich I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 32 kTherefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will lbury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. 33 And the dead bodies of this people will be mfood for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. 34 And I will nsilence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem othe voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.
1 “At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs. 2 And they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and which they have sought and worshiped. And they shall not be gathered or buried. pThey shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. 3 qDeath shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places rwhere I have driven them, declares the Lord of hosts.
Sin and Treachery
4 “You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When men fall, do they not rise again?
If one turns away, does he not return?
5 Why then has this people turned away
in perpetual backsliding?
They hold fast to deceit;
they refuse to return.
6 I have paid attention and listened,
but they have not spoken rightly;
no man relents of his evil,
saying, ‘What have I done?’
Everyone turns to his own course,
like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
7 sEven the stork in the heavens
knows her times,
and the turtledove, swallow, and crane1
keep the time of their coming,
but my people know not
the rules2 of the Lord.
8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise,
and the law of the Lord is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
has made it into a lie.
9 The wise men shall be put to shame;
they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
so what wisdom is in them?
10 Therefore I will give ttheir wives to others
and their fields to conquerors,
because ufrom the least to the greatest
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.
11 vThey have healed the wound of my people lightly,
wsaying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.
12 xWere they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among the fallen;
when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord.
13 yWhen I would gather them, declares the Lord,
there are no grapes on the vine,
nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
and what I gave them has passed away from them.”3
14 Why do we sit still?
Gather together; let us go into the fortified cities
and perish there,
for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish
and has zgiven us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the Lord.
15 aWe looked for peace, but no good came;
for a time of healing, but behold, terror.
16 “The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;
at the sound of the neighing of their stallions
the whole land quakes.
They come and devour the land and all that fills it,
the city and those who dwell in it.
17 For behold, I am sending among you serpents,
adders that cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you,”
declares the Lord.
Jeremiah Grieves for His People
18 My joy is gone; grief is upon me;4
my heart is sick within me.
19 Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people
from the length and breadth of the land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
bIs her King not in her?”
“Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images
and cwith their foreign idols?”
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
21 dFor the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded;
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me.
22 Is there no ebalm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?
1 5 Oh that my head were waters,
and my eyes a fountain of ftears,
that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2 6 Oh that I had in the desert
a travelers’ lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all gadulterers,
a company of treacherous men.
3 They bend their tongue like a bow;
falsehood and not truth has grown strong7 in the land;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, declares the Lord.
4 Let everyone hbeware of his neighbor,
and put no trust in any brother,
for every brother is a deceiver,
and every neighbor goes about as a islanderer.
5 Everyone deceives his neighbor,
and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongue to speak lies;
they weary themselves committing iniquity.
6 Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit,
they refuse to know me, declares the Lord.
