7 THIS WORD CAME FROM THE LORD to Jeremiah. Stand at the gate of the LORD's house and there make your proclamation: Listen to the words of the LORD, all you men of Judah who come in through these gates to worship him. These are the words of the LORD of Hosts the God of Israel: Mend your ways and your doings, that I may let you live in this place. You keep saying, 'This place is a temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!' This catchword of yours is a lie; put not trust in it. Mend your ways and your doings, deal fairly with one another, do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, shed no innocent blood in this place, do not run after other gods to your own ruin. Then I will let you live in this place, in the land which I gave long ago to your forefathers for all time. You gain nothing by putting your trust in this lie. You steal, you murder, you commit adultery and perjury, you burn sacrifices to Baal, you run after other gods whom you have not known; then you come and stand before me in this house, which bears my name, and say, 'We are safe'; safe, you think, to indulge in all these abominations. Do you think that this house, this house which bears my name, is a robbers' cave? I myself have seen all this, says the LORD. Go to my shrine at Shiloh, which once I made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I do to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. And now you have done all these things, says the LORD; though I took pains to speak to you, you did not listen, and though I called, you gave no answer. Therefore what I did to Shiloh I will do to this house which bears my name, the house in which you put your trust, the place I gave to you and your forefathers; I will fling you away out of my sight, as I flung away all your kinsfolk, the whole brood of Ephraim. Offer up no prayer, Jeremiah, for this people, raise no plea or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me; for I will not listen to you. Do you not see what is going on in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? Children are gathering wood, fathers lighting fires, women kneading dough to make crescent-cakes in honour of the queen of heaven; and drink-offerings are poured out to other gods than me — all to provoke and hurt me. But is it I, says the LORD, whom they hurt? No; it is them- selves, covering their own selves with shame. Therefore, says the Lord GOD, my anger and fury shall fall on this place, on man and beast, on trees and crops, and it shall burn unquenched. These are the words of the LORD of Hosts the God of Israel: Add whole- offerings to sacrifices and eat the flesh if you will. But when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt, I gave them no commands about whole-offering and sacrifice; I said not a word about them. What I did command them was this: If you obey me, I will be your God and you shall be my people. You must conform to all my commands, if you would prosper. But they did not listen; they paid no heed, and perished in disobedience with evil and stubborn hearts; they looked backwards and not forwards, from the day when your forefathers left Egypt until now. I took pains to send to them all my servants the prophets; they did not listen to me, they paid no heed, but were obstinate and proved even more wicked than their fore- fathers. When you tell them this, they will not listen to you; if you call them, they will not answer. Then you shall say to them, This is the nation that did not obey the LORD its God nor accept correction; truth has perished, it is heard no more on their lips. O Jerusalem, cut off your hair, the symbol of your dedication, and throw it away; raise up a lament on the high bare places. For the LORD has spurned the generation which has roused his wrath, and has abandoned them. For the men of Judah have done what is wrong in my eyes, says the LORD. They have defiled with their loathsome idols the house that bears my name, they have built a shrine of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, at which to burn their sons and daughters; that was no command of mine, nor did it ever enter my thought. Therefore a time is coming, says the LORD, when it shall no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for the dead shall be buried in Topheth because there is no room elsewhere. So the bodies of this people shall become food for the birds of the air and the wild beasts, and there will be no one to scare them away. From the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem I will banish all sounds of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride; for the land shall become desert. 8 At that time, says the LORD, men shall bring out from their graves the bones of the kings of Judah, of the officers, priests, and prophets, and of all who lived in Jerusalem. They shall expose them to the sun, the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they loved and served and adored, to whom they resorted and bowed in worship. Those bones shall not be gathered up nor buried but shall become dung on the ground. All the survivors of this wicked race, wherever I have banished them, would rather die than live. This is the very word of the LORD of Hosts. You shall say to them, These are the words of the LORD: If men fall, can they not also rise? If a man breaks away, can he not return? Then why are this people so wayward, incurable in their waywardness? Why have they clung to their treachery and refused to return to their obedience? I have listened to them and heard not one word of truth, not one sinner crying remorsefully, "Oh, what have I done?' Each one breaks away in headlong career as a war-horse plunges in battle. The stork in the sky knows the time to migrate, the dove and the swift and the wryneck know the season of return; but my people do not know the ordinances of the LORD. How can you say, 'We are wise, we have the law of the LORD', when scribes with their lying pens have falsified it? The wise are put to shame. they are dismayed and have lost their wits. They have spurned the word of the LORD, and what sort of wisdom is theirs? Therefore will I give their wives to other men and their land to new owners. For all, high and low, are out for ill-gotten gain; prophets and priests are frauds, every one of them; they dress my people's wounds, but skin-deep only, with their saying, 'All is well.' All is well? Nothing is well! Are they ashamed when they practise their abominations? Ashamed? Not they! They can never be put out of countenance. Therefore they can fall with a great crash, and be brought to the ground on the day of my reckoning. The LORD has said it. I would gather their harvest, says the LORD, but there are no grapes on the vine, no figs on the fig-tree; even their leaves are withered. Why do we sit idle? Up, all of you together, let us go into our walled cities and there meet our doom. For the LORD our God has struck us down, he has given us draught of bitter poison; for we have sinned against the LORD. Can we hope to prosper when nothing goes well? Can we hope for respite when the terror falls suddenly? The snoring of his horses is heard from Dan; at the neighing of his stallions the whole land trembles. The enemy come; they devour the land and all its store, city and citizen alike. Beware, I am sending snakes against you, vipers, such as no man can charm, and they shall bite you. This is the very word of the LORD. How can I bear my sorrow? I am sick at heart. Hark, the cry of my people from a distant land: 'Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King no longer there?' Why do they provoke me with their images and foreign gods? Harvest is past, summer is over, and we are not saved. I am wounded at the sight of my people's wound; I go like a mourner, overcome with horror. Is there no balm in Gilead, no physician there? Why has no new skin grown over their wound? 9 Would that my head were all water, my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for my people's dead! Oh that I could find in the wilderness a shelter by the wayside, that I might leave my people and depart! Adulterers are they all, a mob of traitors. The tongue is their weapon, a bow ready bent. Lying, not truth, is master in the land. They run from one sine to another, and for me they care nothing. This is the very word of the LORD. Be on your guard, each man against his friend; put no trust even in a brother, Brothers supplants brother, and friend slanders friend. They make game of their friends but never speak the truth; they have trained their tongues to lies; deep in their sin, they cannot retrace their steps. Wrong follows wrong, deceit follows deceit; they refuse to acknowledge me. This is the very word of the LORD. Therefore these are the words of the LORD of Hosts: I am their refiner and will assay them. How can I disregard my people? Their tongue is a cruel arrow, their mouths speak lies. One speaks amicably to another, while inwardly he plans a trap for him. Shall I not punish them for this? says the LORD; shall I not take vengeance on such a people? Over the mountains will I raise weeping and wailing, and over the desert pastures will I chant a dirge. They are scorched and untrodden, they hear no lowing of cattle; birds of the air and beasts have fled and are gone. I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of wolves, and the cities of Judah an unpeopled waste. What man is wise enough to understand this, to understand what the LORD has said and to proclaim it? Why has the land become a dead land, scorched like the desert and untrodden? The LORD said, It is because they forsook my law which I set before them; they neither obeyed me nor con- formed to it. They followed the promptings of their own stubborn hearts, they followed the Baalim as their forefathers had taught them. Therefore these are the words of the LORD of Hosts the God of Israel: I will feed this people with wormwood and give them bitter poison to drink. I will scatter them among nations whom neither they nor their forefathers have known; I will harry them with the sword until I have made an end of them. These are the words of the LORD of Hosts: Summon the wailing women to come, send for the women skilled in keening to come quickly and raise a lament for us, that our eyes may run with tears and our eyelids be wet with weeping. Hark, hark, lamentation is heard in Zion: How fearful is our ruin! How great our shame! We have left our lands, our houses have been pulled down. Listen, you women, to the words of the LORD, that your ears may catch what he says. Teach your daughters the lament, let them teach one another this dirge: Death has climbed in through our windows, it has entered our palaces, it sweeps off the children in the open air and drives young men from the streets. This is the word of the LORD: The corpses of men shall fall and lie like dung in the fields, like swathes behind the reaper, but no one shall gather them. These are the words of the LORD: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom nor the valiant of his valour; let not the rich man boast of his riches; but if any man would boast, let him boast of this, that he understands and knows me. For I am the LORD, I show unfailing love, I do justice and right upon the earth; for on these I have set my heart. This is the very word of the LORD. The time is coming, says the LORD, when I will punish all the circum- cised, Egypt and Judah, Edom and Ammon, Moab, and all who haunt the fringes of the desert; for all alike, the nations and Israel, are uncircumcised in heart. 10 Listen, Israel, to this word that the LORD has spoken against you: Do not fall into the ways of the nations, do not be awed by signs in the heavens; it is the nations who go in awe of these. For the carved images of the nation are a sham, they are nothing but timber cut from the forest, worked with a chisel by a craftsman; he adorns it with silver and gold, fastening them on with hammer and nails so that they do not fall apart. They can no more speak than a scarecrow in a plot of cucumbers; they must be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them: they can do no harm, and they have no power to do good. Where can one be found like thee, O LORD? Great thou art and great the might of thy name. Who shall not fear thee, king of nations? for fear is thy fitting tribute. Where among the wisest of the nations and all their royalty can one be found like thee? They are fools and blockheads one and all, learning their nonsense from a log of wood. The beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and the gold from Ophir; all are the work of craftsmen and goldsmiths. They are draped in violet and purple, all the work of skilled men. But the LORD is God in truth, a living god, an eternal king. The earth quakes under his wrath, nations cannot endure his fury. [You shall say this to them: The gods who did not make heaven and earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.] God made the earth by his power, fixed the world in place by his wisdom, unfurled the skies by his understanding. At the thunder of his voice the waters in heaven are amazed; he brings up the mist from the ends of the earth, he opens rifts for the rain and brings the wind out of his storehouses. All men are brutish and ignorant; every goldsmith is discredited by his idol; for the figures he casts are a sham, there is no breath in them. They are worth nothing, mere mockeries, which perish when their day of reckoning comes. God, Jacob's creator, is not like these; for he is maker of all. Israel is the people he claims as his own; the LORD of Hosts is his name. Put your goods together and carry them out of the country, living as you are under siege. For these are the words of the LORD: This time I will uproot the whole population of the land, and I will press them hard and squeeze them dry. O the pain of my wounds! Cruel are the blows I suffer. But this is my plight, I said, and I must endure it. My home is ruined, my tent-ropes are severed, my sons have left me and are gone, there is no one to pitch my tent again, no one to put up its curtains. The shepherds of the people are mere brutes; they never consult the LORD, and so they do not prosper, and all their flocks at pasture are scattered. Hark, a rumour comes flying, then a mounting uproar from the land of the north, an army to make Judah's cries desolate, a haunt of wolves. I know, O LORD, that man's ways are not of his own choosing; nor is it for a man to determine his course in life. Correct us, O LORD, but with justice, not in anger, lest thou bring us almost to nothing. Pour out thy fury on nations that have not acknowledged thee, on tribes that have not invoked thee by name; for they have devoured Jacob and made an end of him and have left his home a waste. 11 THE WORD WHICH CAME TO JEREMIAH from the LORD: Listen to the terms of this covenant and repeat them to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Tell them, These are the words of the LORD the God of Israel: A curse on the man who does not observe the terms of this covenant by which I bound your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt, from the smelting-furnace. I said, If you obey me and do all that I tell you, you shall become my people and I will become your God. And I will thus make good the oath I swore to your forefathers, that I would give them a land flowing with milk and honey, the land you now possess. I answered, 'Amen, LORD.' Then the LORD said: Proclaim all these terms in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Say, Listen to the terms of this covenant and carry them out. I have protested to your fore- fathers since I brought them out of Egypt, till this day; I took pains to warn them: Obey me, I said. But they did not obey; they paid no attention to me, but each followed the promptings of his own stubborn and wicked heart. So I brought on them all the penalties laid down in this covenant by which I had brought on them, whose terms they did not observe. The LORD said to me, The men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jeru- salem have entered into a conspiracy: they have gone back to the sins of their earliest forefathers and refused to listen to me. They have followed other gods and worshipped them; Israel and Judah have broken the covenant which I made with their fathers. Therefore these are the words of the LORD: I now bring on them disaster from which they cannot escape; though they cry to me for help I will not listen. The inhabitants of the cities of Judah and of Jerusalem may go and cry for help to the gods to whom they have burnt sacrifices; they will not save them in the hour of disaster. For you, Judah, have as many gods as you have owns; you have set up as many altars to burn sacrifices to Baal as there are streets in Jerusalem. so offer up no prayer for this people; raise no cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call me in the hour of disaster. What right has my beloved in my house with her shameless ways? Can the flesh of fat offerings on the altar ward off the disaster that threatens you? Once the LORD called you an olive-tree, leafy and fair; but now with a great roaring noise you will feel sharp anguish; fire sets its leaves alight and consumes its branches. The LORD of Hosts who planted you has threatened you with disaster, because of the harm Israel and Judah brought on themselves when they provoked me to anger by burning sacrifices to Baal. It was the LORD who showed me, and so I knew; he opened my eyes to what they were doing. I had been like a sheep led obedient to the slaughter; I did not know that they were hatching plots against me and saying, 'Let us cut down the tree while the sap is in it; let us destroy him out of the living, so that his very name shall be forgotten.' 12 O LORD, I will dispute with thee, for thou art just; yes, I will plead my case before thee. Why do the wicked prosper and traitors live at ease? Thou hast planted them and their roots strike deep, they grow up and bear fruit. Thou art ever on their lips, yet far from their hearts. But thou knowest me, O LORD, thou seest me; thou dost test my devotion to thyself. Drag them away like sheep to the shambles; set them apart for the day of slaughter. How long must the country lie parched and its green grass wither? No birds and beasts are left, because its people are so wicked, because they say, 'God will not see what we are doing.' If you have raced with men and the runners have worn you down, how then can you hope to vie with horses? If you fall headlong in easy country, how will you fare in Jordan's dense thickets? All men, your brothers and kinsmen, are traitors to you, they are in full cry after you; trust them not, for all the fine words they give you. I have forsaken the house of Israel, I have cast off my own people. I have given my beloved into the power of her foes. My own people have turned on me like a lion from the scrub, roaring against me; therefore I hate them. Is this land of mine a hyena's lair, with birds of prey hovering around it? Come, you wild beasts; come all of you, flock to the feast. Many shepherds have ravaged my vineyard and trampled down my field, they have made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness, made it a waste land, waste and waterless, to my sorrow. The whole land is waste, and no one cares. Plunderers have swarmed across the high bare places in the wilderness, a sword of the LORD devouring the land from end to end; no creature can find peace. Men sow wheat and reap thistles; they sift but get no grain. They are disappointed in their harvest because of the anger of the LORD. These are the words of the LORD about those evil neighbours who are laying hands on the land which I give to my people Israel as their patri- mony: I will uproot them from that soil. Yet, if they will learn the ways of my people, swearing by my name, 'By the life of the LORD', as they taught my people to swear by Baal, they shall form families among my people. But if they will not listen, I will uproot that people, uproot and destroy them. Also I will uproot Judah from among them; but after I have uprooted them, I will have pity on them again and will bring each man back to his patrimony and his land. This is the very word of the LORD.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Submitted December 14, 2018 at 11:50PM by MarleyEngvall https://ift.tt/2Gf8sdb
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