Jeremiah 23–25

Chapter 23

Woe to the pastors, that destroy and tear the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord.

²Therefore thus saith the Lord the God of Israel to the pastors that feed my people: You have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold I will visit upon you for the evil of your doings, saith the Lord.

³And I will gather together the remnant of my flock, out of all the lands into which I have cast them out: and I will make them return to their own fields, and they shall increase and be multiplied.

⁴And I will set up pastors over them, and they shall feed them: they shall fear no more, and they shall not be dismayed: and none shall be wanting of their number, saith the Lord.

⁵Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch: and a king shall reign, and shall be wise: and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

⁶In those days shall Juda be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently: and this is the name that they shall call him: The Lord our just one.

⁷Therefore behold the days come, saith the Lord, and they shall say no more: The Lord liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt:

⁸But, The Lord liveth, who hath brought out, and brought hither the seed of the house of Israel from the land of the north, and out of all the lands, to which I had cast them forth: and they shall dwell in their own land.

⁹To the prophets: My heart is broken within me, all my bones tremble: I am become as a drunken man, and as a man full of wine, at the presence of the Lord, and at the presence of his holy words.

¹⁰Because the land is full of adulterers, because the land hath mourned by reason of cursing, the fields of the desert are dried up: and their course is become evil, and their strength unlike.

¹¹For the prophet and the priest are defiled: and in my house I have found their wickedness, saith the Lord.

¹²Therefore their way shall be as a slippery way in the dark: for they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evils upon them, the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

¹³And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: they prophesied in Baal and deceived my people Israel.

¹⁴And I have seen the likeness of adulterers, and the way of lying in the prophets of Jerusalem: and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that no man should return from his evil doings, they are all become unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrha.

¹⁵Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts to the prophets: Behold I will feed them with wormwood, and will give them gall to drink: for from the prophets of Jerusalem corruption is gone forth into all the land.

¹⁶Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Hearken not to the words of the prophets that prophesy to you, and deceive you: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.

¹⁷They say to them that blaspheme me: The Lord hath said: You shall have peace: and to every one that walketh in the perverseness of his own heart, they have said: No evil shall come upon you.

¹⁸For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath seen and heard his word? Who hath considered his word and heard it?

¹⁹Behold the whirlwind of the Lord’s indignation shall come forth, and a tempest shall break out and come upon the head of the wicked.

²⁰The wrath of the Lord shall not return till he execute it, and till he accomplish the thought of his heart: in the latter days you shall understand his counsel.

²¹I did not send prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.

²²If they had stood in my counsel, and had made my words known to my people, I should have turned them from their evil way, and from their wicked doings.

²³Am I, think ye, a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?

²⁴Shall a man be hid in secret places, and I not see him, saith the Lord? do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?

²⁵I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, and say: I have dreamed, I have dreamed.

²⁶How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies, and that prophesy the delusions of their own heart?

²⁷Who seek to make my people forget my name through their dreams, which they tell every man to his neighbour: as their fathers forgot my name for Baal.

²⁸The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream: and he that hath my word, let him speak my word with truth: what hath the chaff to do with the wheat, saith the Lord?

²⁹Are not my words as a fire, saith the Lord: and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?

³⁰Therefore behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord: who steal my words every one from his neighbour.

³¹Behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord: who use their tongues, and say: The Lord saith it.

³²Behold I am against the prophets that have lying dreams, saith the Lord: and tell them, and cause my people to err by their lying, and by their wonders: when I sent them not, nor commanded them, who have not profited this people at all, saith the Lord.

³³If therefore this people, or the prophet, or the priest shall ask thee, saying: What is the burden of the Lord? thou shalt say to them: You are the burden: for I will cast you away, saith the Lord.

³⁴And as for the prophet, and the priest, and the people that shall say: The burden of the Lord: I will visit upon that man, and upon his house.

³⁵Thus shall you say every one to his neighbour, and to his brother, What hath the Lord answered? and what hath the Lord spoken?

³⁶And the burden of the Lord shall be mentioned no more, for every man’s word shall be his burden: for you have perverted the words of the living God, of the Lord of hosts our God.

³⁷Thus shalt thou say to the prophet: What hath the Lord answered thee? and what hath the Lord spoken?

³⁸But if you shall say: The burden of the Lord: therefore thus saith the Lord: Because you have said this word: The burden of the Lord: and I have sent to you, saying: Say not, The burden of the Lord:

³⁹Therefore behold I will take you away carrying you, and will forsake you, and the city which I gave to you, and to your fathers, out of my presence.

⁴⁰And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame which shall never be forgotten.

Chapter 24

The Lord shewed me: and behold two baskets full of figs, set before the temple of the Lord: after that Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon had carried away Jechonias the son of Joakim the king of Juda, and his chief men, and the craftsmen, and engravers of Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon.

²One basket had very good figs, like the figs of the first season: and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, because they were bad.

³And the Lord said to me: What seest thou, Jeremias? And I said: Figs, the good figs, very good: and the bad figs, very bad, which cannot be eaten because they are bad.

⁴And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

⁵Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I regard the captives of Juda, whom I have sent forth out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for their good.

⁶And I will set my eyes upon them to be pacified, and I will bring them again into this land: and I will build them up, and not pull them down: and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.

⁷And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: because they shall return to me with their whole heart.

⁸And as the very bad figs, that cannot be eaten, because they are bad: thus saith the Lord: So will I give Sedecias the king of Juda, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that have remained in this city, and that dwell in the land of Egypt.

⁹And I will deliver them up to vexation, and affliction, to all the kingdoms of the earth: to be a reproach, and a byword, and a proverb, and to be a curse in all places, to which I have cast them out.

¹⁰And I will send among them the sword, and the famine, and the pestilence: till they be consumed out of the land which I gave to them, and their fathers.

Chapter 25

The word that came to Jeremias concerning all the people of Juda, in the fourth year of Joakim the son of Josias king of Juda, (the same is the first year of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon,)

²Which Jeremias the prophet spoke to all the people of Juda, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying:

³From the thirteenth year of Josias the son of Ammon king of Juda until this day: this is the three and twentieth year, the word of the Lord hath come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising before day, and speaking, and you have not hearkened.

⁴And the Lord hath sent to you all his servants the prophets, rising early, and sending, and you have not hearkened, nor inclined your ears to hear.

⁵When he said: Return ye, every one from his evil way, and from your wicked devices, and you shall dwell in the land which the Lord hath given to you, and your fathers for ever and ever.

⁶And go not after strange gods to serve them, and adore them: nor provoke me to wrath by the works of your hands, and I will not afflict you.

⁷And you have not heard me, saith the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, to your own hurt.

⁸Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Because you have not heard my words:

⁹Behold I will send, and take all the kindreds of the north, saith the Lord, and Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon my servant: and I will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all the nations that are round about it: and I will destroy them, and make them an astonishment and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.

¹⁰And I will take away from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill and the light of the lamp.

¹¹And all this land shall be a desolation, and an…