Jeremiah 7–8

Jeremiah Preaches in the Temple

7The Lord sent me to the gate of the Temple where the people of Judah went in to worship. He told me to stand there and announce what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, had to say to them: “Change the way you are living and the things you are doing, and I will let you go on living here. ⁴Stop believing those deceitful words, ‘We are safe! This is the Lord’s Temple, this is the Lord’s Temple, this is the Lord’s Temple!’

⁵“Change the way you are living and stop doing the things you are doing. Be fair in your treatment of one another. ⁶Stop taking advantage of aliens, orphans, and widows. Stop killing innocent people in this land. Stop worshipping other gods, for that will destroy you. ⁷If you change, I will let you go on living here in the land which I gave your ancestors as a permanent possession.

⁸“Look, you put your trust in deceitful words. ⁹You steal, murder, commit adultery, tell lies under oath, offer sacrifices to Baal, and worship gods that you had not known before. ¹⁰You do these things I hate, and then you come and stand in my presence, in my own Temple, and say, ‘We are safe!’ ^11*Do you think that my Temple is a hiding place for robbers? I have seen what you are doing. ^12*Go to Shiloh,^f the first place where I chose to be worshipped, and see what I did to it because of the sins of my people Israel. ^13*You have committed all these sins, and even though I spoke to you over and over again, you refused to listen. You would not answer when I called you. ^14*And so, what I did to Shiloh I will do to this Temple of mine, in which you trust. Here in this place that I gave to your ancestors and to you, I will do the same thing that I did to Shiloh. ¹⁵I will drive you out of my sight as I drove out your relatives, the people of Israel. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

The People’s Disobedience

¹⁶The Lord said, “Jeremiah, do not pray for these people. Do not cry or pray on their behalf; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. ¹⁷Don’t you see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ^18*The children gather firewood, the men build fires, and the women mix dough to bake cakes for the goddess they call the Queen of Heaven. They also pour out wine offerings to other gods, in order to hurt me. ¹⁹But am I really the one they are hurting? No, they are hurting themselves and bringing shame on themselves. ²⁰And so I, the Sovereign Lord, will pour out my fierce anger on this Temple. I will pour it out on people and animals alike, and even on the trees and the crops. My anger will be like a fire that no one can put out.

²¹“My people, some sacrifices you burn completely on the altar, and some you are permitted to eat. But what I, the Lord, say is that you might as well eat them all. ²²I gave your ancestors no commands about burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices, when I brought them out of Egypt. ²³But I did command them to obey me, so that I would be their God and they would be my people. And I told them to live as I had commanded them, so that things would go well for them. ²⁴But they did not obey or pay any attention. Instead, they did whatever their stubborn and evil hearts told them to do, and they became worse instead of better. ²⁵From the day that your ancestors came out of Egypt until this very day, I have kept on sending my servants, the prophets, to you. ²⁶Yet no one listened or paid any attention. Instead, you became more stubborn and rebellious than your ancestors.

²⁷“So, Jeremiah, you will speak all these words to my people, but they will not listen to you; you will call them, but they will not answer. ²⁸You will tell them that their nation does not obey me, the Lord their God, or learn from their punishment. Faithfulness is dead. No longer is it even talked about.

Sinful Deeds in Hinnom Valley

²⁹“Mourn, people of Jerusalem; cut off your hair and throw it away. Sing a funeral song on the hilltops, because I, the Lord, am angry, and have rejected my people.

³⁰“The people of Judah have done an evil thing. They have placed their idols, which I hate, in my Temple and have defiled it. ^31*In the Valley of Hinnom they have built an altar called Topheth, so that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters in the fire. I did not command them to do this—it did not even enter my mind. ³²And so, the time will come when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. They will bury people there because there will be nowhere else to bury them. ³³The corpses will be food for the birds and wild animals, and there will be no one to scare them off. ^34*The land will become a desert. In the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the happy sounds of wedding feasts.

8“At that time the bones of the kings and of the officials of Judah, as well as the bones of the priests, of the prophets, and of the other people who lived in Jerusalem, will be taken out of their graves. ²Instead of being gathered and buried, their bones will be like manure lying on the ground. They will be spread out before the sun, the moon, and the stars, which these people have loved and served, and which they have consulted and worshipped. ³And the people of this evil nation who survive, who live in the places where I have scattered them, will prefer to die rather than to go on living. I, the Lord Almighty, have spoken.”

Sin and Punishment

⁴The Lord told me to say to his people, “When someone falls down, doesn’t he get back up? If someone misses the road, doesn’t he turn back? ⁵Why then, my people, do you turn away from me without ever turning back? You cling to your idols and refuse to return to me. ⁶I listened carefully, but you did not speak the truth. Not one of you has been sorry for his wickedness; not one of you has asked, ‘What have I done wrong?’ Everyone keeps on going his own way, like a horse rushing into battle. ⁷Even storks know when it is time to return; doves, swallows, and thrushes know when it is time to migrate. But, my people, you do not know the laws by which I rule you. ⁸How can you say that you are wise, and that you know my laws? Look, the laws have been changed by dishonest scribes. ⁹Your wise men are put to shame; they are confused and trapped. They have rejected my words; what wisdom have they got now? ^10*So I will give their fields to new owners and their wives to other men. Everyone, great and small, tries to make money dishonestly. Even prophets and priests cheat the people. ^11*They act as if my people’s wounds were only scratches. ‘All is well,’ they say, when all is not well. ^12*My people, were you ashamed because you did these disgusting things? No, you were not ashamed at all; you don’t even know how to blush! And so you will fall as others have fallen; when I punish you, that will be the end of you. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹³“I wanted to gather my people, as a farmer gathers a harvest; but they are like a vine with no grapes, like a fig tree with no figs; even the leaves have withered. Therefore, I have allowed outsiders to take over the land.”^g

¹⁴“Why are we sitting still?” God’s people ask. “Come on, we will run to the fortified cities, and die there. The Lord our God has condemned us to die; he has given us poison to drink, because we have sinned against him. ¹⁵We hoped for peace and a time of healing, but it was no use; terror came instead. ¹⁶Our enemies are already in the city of Dan; we hear the snorting of their horses. The whole land trembles when their horses neigh. Our enemies have come to destroy our land and everything in it, our city and all its people.”

¹⁷“Watch out!” the Lord says, “I am sending snakes among you, poisonous snakes that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you.”

Jeremiah’s Sorrow for His People

¹⁸My sorrow cannot be healed;^h

I am sick at heart.

¹⁹Listen! Throughout the land

I hear my people crying out,

“Is the Lord no longer in Zion?

Is Zion’s king no longer there?”

The Lord, their king, replies,

“Why have you made me angry by worshipping your idols

and by bowing down to your useless foreign gods?”

²⁰The people cry out,

“The summer is gone, the harvest is over,

but we have not been saved.”

²¹My heart has been crushed

because my people are crushed;

I mourn; I am completely dismayed.

²²Is there no medicine in Gilead?ⁱ

Are there no doctors there?

Why, then, have my people not been healed?