Jeremiah 2:4–13

The Sin of Israel’s Ancestors

⁴Listen to the Lord’s message, you descendants of Jacob, you tribes of Israel. ⁵The Lord says:

“What accusation did your ancestors bring against me?

What made them turn away from me?

They worshipped worthless idols

and became worthless themselves.

⁶They did not care about me,

even though I rescued them from Egypt

and led them through the wilderness:

a land of deserts and sand dunes,

a dry and dangerous land

where no one lives

and no one will even travel.

⁷I brought them into a fertile land,

to enjoy its harvests and its other good things.

But instead they ruined my land;

they defiled the country I had given them.

⁸The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’

My own priests did not know me.

The rulers rebelled against me;

the prophets spoke in the name of Baal

and worshipped useless idols.

The ’s Case against His People

⁹“And so I, the Lord, will state my case against my people again.

I will bring charges against their descendants.

¹⁰Go west to the island of Cyprus,

and send someone eastwards to the land of Kedar.

You will see that nothing like this has ever happened before.

¹¹No other nation has ever changed its gods,

even though they were not real.

But my people have exchanged me,

the God who has brought them honour,

for gods that can do nothing for them.

¹²And so I command the sky to shake with horror,

to be amazed and astonished,

¹³for my people have committed two sins:

they have turned away from me,

the spring of fresh water,

and they have dug cisterns,

cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all.