Jeremiah, starting at chapter 7
{7:1} The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, {7:2}
Stand in the gate of Yahweh's house, and proclaim there this word, and
say, Hear the word of Yahweh, all you of Judah, who enter in at these
gates to worship Yahweh. {7:3} Thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of
Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell
in this place. {7:4} Don't you trust in lying words, saying, The
temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, are
these. {7:5} For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if
you thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor; {7:6}
if you don't oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, and
don't shed innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods
to your own hurt: {7:7} then will I cause you to dwell in this place,
in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even forevermore.
{7:8} Behold, you trust in lying words, that can't profit. {7:9} Will
you steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn
incense to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known,
{7:10} and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by
my name, and say, We are delivered; that you may do all these
abominations? {7:11} Is this house, which is called by my name, become
a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, says
Yahweh. {7:12} But go you now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I
caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the
wickedness of my people Israel. {7:13} Now, because you have done all
these works, says Yahweh, and I spoke to you, rising up early and
speaking, but you didn't hear; and I called you, but you didn't
answer: {7:14} therefore will I do to the house which is called by my
name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to
your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. {7:15} I will cast you out of my
sight, as I have cast out all your brothers, even the whole seed of
Ephraim. {7:16} Therefore don't you pray for this people, neither lift
up a cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me; for I
will not hear you. {7:17} Don't you see what they do in the cities of
Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? {7:18} The children gather
wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough,
to make cakes to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink-offerings
to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. {7:19} Do they
provoke me to anger? says Yahweh; [do they] not [provoke] themselves,
to the confusion of their own faces? {7:20} Therefore thus says the
Lord Yahweh: Behold, my anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this
place, on man, and on animal, and on the trees of the field, and on
the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
{7:21} Thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel: Add your burnt
offerings to your sacrifices, and eat you flesh. {7:22} For I didn't
speak to your fathers, nor command them in the day that I brought them
out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:
{7:23} but this thing I commanded them, saying, Listen to my voice,
and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk you in
all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you. {7:24}
But they didn't listen nor turn their ear, but walked in [their own]
counsels [and] in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went
backward, and not forward. {7:25} Since the day that your fathers came
forth out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have sent to you all my
servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: {7:26}
yet they didn't listen to me, nor inclined their ear, but made their
neck stiff: they did worse than their fathers. {7:27} You shall speak
all these words to them; but they will not listen to you: you shall
also call to them; but they will not answer you. {7:28} You shall tell
them, This is the nation that has not listened to the voice of Yahweh
their God, nor received instruction: truth is perished, and is cut off
from their mouth. {7:29} Cut off your hair, [Jerusalem], and cast it
away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Yahweh has
rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. {7:30} For the
children of Judah have done that which is evil in my sight, says
Yahweh: they have set their abominations in the house which is called
by my name, to defile it. {7:31} They have built the high places of
Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their
sons and their daughters in the fire; which I didn't command, neither
came it into my mind. {7:32} Therefore, behold, the days come, says
Yahweh, that it shall no more be called Topheth, nor The valley of the
son of Hinnom, but The valley of Slaughter: for they shall bury in
Topheth, until there be no place [to bury]. {7:33} The dead bodies of
this people shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the
animals of the earth; and none shall frighten them away. {7:34} Then
will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets
of Jerusalem, the 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.
{8:1} At that time, says Yahweh, they shall bring out the bones of
the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the
priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves; {8:2} and they shall
spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of the sky,
which they have loved, and which they have served, and after which
they have walked, and which they have sought, and which they have
worshiped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried, they shall be
for dung on the surface of the earth. {8:3} Death shall be chosen
rather than life by all the residue that remain of this evil family,
that remain in all the places where I have driven them, says Yahweh of
Armies. {8:4} Moreover you shall tell them, Thus says Yahweh: Shall
men fall, and not rise up again? Shall one turn away, and not return?
{8:5} Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual
backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return. {8:6} I
listened and heard, but they didn't speak aright: no man repents him
of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? everyone turns to his
course, as a horse that rushes headlong in the battle. {8:7} Yes, the
stork in the sky knows her appointed times; and the turtle-dove and
the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my
people don't know Yahweh's law. {8:8} How do you say, We are wise, and
the law of Yahweh is with us? But, behold, the false pen of the
scribes has worked falsely. {8:9} The wise men are disappointed, they
are dismayed and taken: behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh;
and what manner of wisdom is in them? {8:10} Therefore will I give
their wives to others, and their fields to those who shall possess
them: for everyone from the least even to the greatest is given to
covetousness; from the prophet even to the priest every one deals
falsely. {8:11} They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. {8:12} Were
they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not
at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall
among those who fall; in the time of their visitation they shall be
cast down, says Yahweh. {8:13} I will utterly consume them, says
Yahweh: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig
tree, and the leaf shall fade; and [the things that] I have given them
shall pass away from them. {8:14} Why do we sit still? assemble
yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities, and let us be
silent there; for Yahweh our God has put us to silence, and given us
water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against Yahweh. {8:15}
We looked for peace, but no good came; [and] for a time of healing,
and, behold, dismay! {8:16} The snorting of his horses is heard from
Dan: at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones the whole land
trembles; for they are come, and have devoured the land and all that
is in it; the city and those who dwell therein. {8:17} For, behold, I
will send serpents, adders, among you, which will not be charmed; and
they shall bite you, says Yahweh. {8:18} Oh that I could comfort
myself against sorrow! my heart is faint within me. {8:19} Behold, the
voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very
far off: isn't Yahweh in Zion? Isn't her King in her? Why have they
provoked me to anger with their engraved images, and with foreign
vanities? {8:20} The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are
not saved. {8:21} For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt:
I mourn; dismay has taken hold on me. {8:22} Is there no balm in
Gilead? is there no physician there? why then isn't the health of the
daughter of my people recovered?
{9:1} Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my
people! {9:2} Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of
wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for
they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. {9:3} They
bend their tongue, [as it were] their bow, for falsehood; and they are
grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from
evil to evil, and they don't know me, says Yahweh. {9:4} Take you heed
everyone of his neighbor, and don't you trust in any brother; for
every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will go about
with slanders. {9:5} They will deceive everyone his neighbor, and will
not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they
weary themselves to commit iniquity. {9:6} Your habitation is in the
midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, says Yahweh.
{9:7} Therefore thus says Yahweh of Armies, Behold, I will melt them,
and try them; for how [else] should I do, because of the daughter of
my people? {9:8} Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks deceit: one
speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he
lays wait for him. {9:9} Shall I not visit them for these things? says
Yahweh; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? {9:10}
For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the
pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up,
so that none passes through; neither can men hear the voice of the
cattle; both the birds of the sky and the animals are fled, they are
gone. {9:11} I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling-place of jackals;
and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.
{9:12} Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and [who is] he
to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? why is
the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passes
through? {9:13} Yahweh says, Because they have forsaken my law which I
set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein,
{9:14} but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart, and
after the Baals, which their fathers taught them; {9:15} therefore
thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed
them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to
drink. {9:16} I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither
they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after
them, until I have consumed them. {9:17} Thus says Yahweh of Armies,
Consider you, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and
send for the skillful women, that they may come: {9:18} and let them
make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down
with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. {9:19} For a voice
of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! we are greatly
confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast
down our dwellings. {9:20} Yet hear the word of Yahweh, you women, and
let your ear receive the word of his mouth; and teach your daughters
wailing, and everyone her neighbor lamentation. {9:21} For death is
come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces; to cut off
the children from outside, [and] the young men from the streets.
{9:22} Speak, Thus says Yahweh, The dead bodies of men shall fall as
dung on the open field, and as the handful after the harvester; and
none shall gather [them]. {9:23} Thus says Yahweh, Don't let the wise
man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his
might, don't let the rich man glory in his riches; {9:24} but let him
who glories glory in this, that he has understanding, and knows me,
that I am Yahweh who exercises loving kindness, justice, and
righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, says
Yahweh. {9:25} Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will punish
all those who are circumcised in [their] uncircumcision: {9:26} Egypt,
and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that
have the corners [of their hair] cut off, who dwell in the wilderness;
for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are
uncircumcised in heart.
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