Jeremiah 8:18–9:2

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?

9I wish my head were a well of water,

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I could cry day and night

for my people who have been killed.

²I wish I had a place to stay in the desert

where I could get away from my people.

They are all unfaithful,

a mob of traitors.