Jeremiah, starting at chapter 22
{22:1} Thus said Yahweh: Go down to the house of the king of Judah,
and speak there this word, {22:2} Say, Hear the word of Yahweh, king
of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you, and your servants, and
your people who enter in by these gates. {22:3} Thus says Yahweh:
Execute you justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed
out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence, to
the foreigner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent
blood in this place. {22:4} For if you do this thing indeed, then
shall there enter in by the gates of this house kings sitting on the
throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, he, and his
servants, and his people. {22:5} But if you will not hear these words,
I swear by myself, says Yahweh, that this house shall become a
desolation. {22:6} For thus says Yahweh concerning the house of the
king of Judah: You are Gilead to me, [and] the head of Lebanon; [yet]
surely I will make you a wilderness, [and] cities which are not
inhabited. {22:7} I will prepare destroyers against you, everyone with
his weapons; and they shall cut down your choice cedars, and cast them
into the fire. {22:8} Many nations shall pass by this city, and they
shall say every man to his neighbor, Why has Yahweh done thus to this
great city? {22:9} Then they shall answer, Because they forsook the
covenant of Yahweh their God, and worshiped other gods, and served
them. {22:10} Don't you weep for the dead, neither bemoan him; but
weep sore for him who goes away; for he shall return no more, nor see
his native country. {22:11} For thus says Yahweh touching Shallum the
son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his
father, [and] who went forth out of this place: He shall not return
there any more. {22:12} But in the place where they have led him
captive, there shall he die, and he shall see this land no more.
{22:13} Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his
chambers by injustice; who uses his neighbor's service without wages,
and doesn't give him his hire; {22:14} who says, I will build me a
wide house and spacious chambers, and cuts him out windows; and it is
ceiling with cedar, and painted with vermilion. {22:15} Shall you
reign, because you strive to excel in cedar? Didn't your father eat
and drink, and do justice and righteousness? then it was well with
him. {22:16} He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was
well. Wasn't this to know me? says Yahweh. {22:17} But your eyes and
your heart are not but for your covetousness, and for shedding
innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
{22:18} Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning Jehoiakim the son of
Josiah, king of Judah: they shall not lament for him, [saying], Ah my
brother! or, Ah sister! They shall not lament for him, [saying] Ah
lord! or, Ah his glory! {22:19} He shall be buried with the burial of
a donkey, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. {22:20}
Go up to Lebanon, and cry; and lift up your voice in Bashan, and cry
from Abarim; for all your lovers are destroyed. {22:21} I spoke to you
in your prosperity; but you said, I will not hear. This has been your
manner from your youth, that you didn't obey my voice. {22:22} The
wind shall feed all your shepherds, and your lovers shall go into
captivity: surely then you will be ashamed and confounded for all your
wickedness. {22:23} Inhabitant of Lebanon, who makes your nest in the
cedars, how greatly to be pitied you will be when pangs come on you,
the pain as of a woman in travail! {22:24} As I live, says Yahweh,
though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet on my
right hand, yet would I pluck you there; {22:25} and I will give you
into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of them
of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. {22:26} I will cast you
out, and your mother who bore you, into another country, where you
were not born; and there you will die. {22:27} But to the land
whereunto their soul longs to return, there shall they not return.
{22:28} Is this man Coniah a despised broken vessel? is he a vessel in
which none delights? why are they cast out, he and his seed, and are
cast into the land which they don't know? {22:29} O earth, earth,
earth, hear the word of Yahweh. {22:30} Thus says Yahweh, Write you
this man childless, a man who shall not prosper in his days; for no
more shall a man of his seed prosper, sitting on the throne of David,
and ruling in Judah.
{23:1} Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my
pasture! says Yahweh. {23:2} Therefore thus says Yahweh, the God of
Israel, against the shepherds who feed my people: You have scattered
my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them; behold, I
will visit on you the evil of your doings, says Yahweh. {23:3} I will
gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have
driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall
be fruitful and multiply. {23:4} I will set up shepherds over them,
who shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed,
neither shall any be lacking, says Yahweh. {23:5} Behold, the days
come, says Yahweh, that I will raise to David a righteous Branch, and
he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and
righteousness in the land. {23:6} In his days Judah shall be saved,
and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name by which he shall
be called: Yahweh our righteousness. {23:7} Therefore, behold, the
days come, says Yahweh, that they shall no more say, As Yahweh lives,
who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; {23:8}
but, As Yahweh lives, who brought up and who led the seed of the house
of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries where I
had driven them. They shall dwell in their own land. {23:9} Concerning
the prophets. My heart within me is broken, all my bones shake; I am
like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of
Yahweh, and because of his holy words. {23:10} For the land is full of
adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourns; the pastures of
the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is
not right; {23:11} for both prophet and priest are profane; yes, in my
house have I found their wickedness, says Yahweh. {23:12} Therefore
their way shall be to them as slippery places in the darkness: they
shall be driven on, and fall therein; for I will bring evil on them,
even the year of their visitation, says Yahweh. {23:13} I have seen
folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied by Baal, and caused
my people Israel to err. {23:14} In the prophets of Jerusalem also I
have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies;
and they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that none does return
from his wickedness: they are all of them become to me as Sodom, and
its inhabitants as Gomorrah. {23:15} Therefore thus says Yahweh of
Armies concerning the prophets: Behold, I will feed them with
wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall; for from the prophets
of Jerusalem is ungodliness gone forth into all the land. {23:16} Thus
says Yahweh of Armies, Don't listen to the words of the prophets who
prophesy to you: they teach you vanity; they speak a vision of their
own heart, and not out of the mouth of Yahweh. {23:17} They say
continually to those who despise me, Yahweh has said, You shall have
peace; and to everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart
they say, No evil shall come on you. {23:18} For who has stood in the
council of Yahweh, that he should perceive and hear his word? who has
marked my word, and heard it? {23:19} Behold, the storm of Yahweh,
[even his] wrath, is gone forth, yes, a whirling storm: it shall burst
on the head of the wicked. {23:20} The anger of Yahweh shall not
return, until he has executed, and until he have performed the intents
of his heart: in the latter days you shall understand it perfectly.
{23:21} I sent not these prophets, yet they ran: I didn't speak to
them, yet they prophesied. {23:22} But if they had stood in my
council, then had they caused my people to hear my words, and had
turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.
{23:23} Am I a God at hand, says Yahweh, and not a God afar off?
{23:24} Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see
him? says Yahweh. Don't I fill heaven and earth? says Yahweh. {23:25}
I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my
name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. {23:26} How long shall
this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, even the
prophets of the deceit of their own heart? {23:27} who think to cause
my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man
to his neighbor, as their fathers forgot my name for Baal. {23:28} The
prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has my word,
let him speak my word faithfully. What is the straw to the wheat? says
Yahweh. {23:29} Isn't my word like fire? says Yahweh; and like a
hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? {23:30} Therefore, behold, I am
against the prophets, says Yahweh, who steal my words everyone from
his neighbor. {23:31} Behold, I am against the prophets, says Yahweh,
who use their tongues, and say, He says. {23:32} Behold, I am against
those who prophesy lying dreams, says Yahweh, and do tell them, and
cause my people to err by their lies, and by their vain boasting: yet
I didn't send them, nor commanded them; neither do they profit this
people at all, says Yahweh. {23:33} When this people, or the prophet,
or a priest, shall ask you, saying, What is the burden of Yahweh? then
you shall tell them, What burden! I will cast you off, says Yahweh.
{23:34} As for the prophet, and the priest, and the people, who shall
say, The burden of Yahweh, I will even punish that man and his house.
{23:35} You shall say everyone to his neighbor, and everyone to his
brother, What has Yahweh answered? and, What has Yahweh spoken?
{23:36} You shall mention the burden of Yahweh no more: for every
man's own word shall be his burden; for you have perverted the words
of the living God, of Yahweh of Armies our God. {23:37} You shall say
to the prophet, What has Yahweh answered you? and, What has Yahweh
spoken? {23:38} But if you say, The burden of Yahweh; therefore thus
says Yahweh: Because you say this word, The burden of Yahweh, and I
have sent to you, saying, You shall not say, The burden of Yahweh;
{23:39} therefore, behold, I will utterly forget you, and I will cast
you off, and the city that I gave to you and to your fathers, away
from my presence: {23:40} and I will bring an everlasting reproach on
you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.
{24:1} Yahweh showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs set before
the temple of Yahweh, after that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had
carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and
the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem,
and had brought them to Babylon. {24:2} One basket had very good figs,
like the figs that are first-ripe; and the other basket had very bad
figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. {24:3} Then said
Yahweh to me, What see you, Jeremiah? I said, Figs; the good figs,
very good; and the bad, very bad, that can't be eaten, they are so
bad. {24:4} The word of Yahweh came to me, saying, {24:5} Thus says
Yahweh, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I regard the
captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of
the Chaldeans, for good. {24:6} For I will set my eyes on them for
good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them,
and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.
{24:7} I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh: and they
shall be my people, and I will be their God; for they shall return to
me with their whole heart. {24:8} As the bad figs, which can't be
eaten, they are so bad, surely thus says Yahweh, So will I give up
Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of
Jerusalem, who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of
Egypt, {24:9} I will even give them up to be tossed back and forth
among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil; to be a reproach and a
proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I shall drive them.
{24:10} I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among
them, until they be consumed from off the land that I gave to them and
to their fathers.
___
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