“ ‘Listen to the Lord’s message, all of you people of Judah. You always come through these gates to worship the Lord. ³The God of Israel is speaking to you. He is the Lord who rules over all. He says, “Change the way you live and act. Then I will let you live in this place.

⁴“ ‘ “Do not trust in lies. Do not say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord! This is the temple of the Lord! This is the temple of the Lord!’

⁵“ ‘ “You must really change the way you live and act. Treat each other fairly. ⁶Do not treat outsiders or widows badly in this place. Do not take advantage of children whose fathers have died. Do not kill those who are not guilty of doing anything wrong. Do not worship other gods. That will only bring harm to you.

⁷“ ‘ “If you obey me, I will let you live in this place. It is the land I gave your people who lived long ago. It was promised to them for ever and ever.

⁸“ ‘ “But look! You are trusting in worthless lies.

⁹“ ‘ “You continue to steal and commit murder. You commit adultery and tell lies. You burn incense to Baal. You worship other gods you have not known anything about before.

¹⁰“ ‘ “Then you come and stand in front of me. You keep coming to this house where I have put my Name. You say, ‘We are safe.’ You think you are safe when you do so many things I hate. ¹¹My Name is in this house. But you have made it a den for robbers! I have been watching you!” announces the Lord.

¹²“ ‘ “Go now to the town of Shiloh. Go to the place where I first made a home for my Name. See what I did to it because of the evil things my people Israel were doing.

¹³“ ‘ “I spoke to you again and again,” announces the Lord. “I warned you while you were doing all of those things. But you did not listen. I called out to you. But you did not answer. ¹⁴So what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house where my Name is. It is the temple you trust in. It is the place I gave to you and your people of long ago.

¹⁵“ ‘ “But I will throw you out of my land. That is exactly what I did to the people of Ephraim. And they are your relatives.” ’

¹⁶“Jeremiah, do not pray for those people. Do not make any appeal or request for them. Do not beg me. I will not listen to you.

¹⁷“Don’t you see what they are doing? They are worshiping other gods in the towns of Judah. They are offering sacrifices to them in the streets of Jerusalem. ¹⁸The children go out and gather wood. The fathers light the fire. The women mix the dough. They make flat cakes of bread for the goddess who is called the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods. That makes me very angry.

¹⁹“But am I the one they are hurting?” announces the Lord. “Aren’t they only harming themselves? They should be ashamed of it.”

²⁰So the Lord and King says, “I will pour out my burning anger on this place. It will strike people and animals alike. It will destroy the trees and the crops in the fields. It will burn, and no one will be able to put it out.”

²¹The Lord who rules over all is the God of Israel. He says, “Go ahead! Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices. Eat the meat yourselves! ²²When I brought your people out of Egypt, I spoke to them. But I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices. ²³I also gave them another command. I said, ‘Obey me. Then I will be your God. And you will be my people. Live the way I command you to live. Then things will go well with you.’

²⁴“But they did not listen. They refused to pay any attention to me. Instead, they did what their stubborn and evil hearts wanted them to do. They went backward and not forward.

²⁵“Again and again I sent my servants the prophets to you. They came to you day after day. They prophesied from the time your people left Egypt until now.

²⁶“But the people did not listen. They refused to pay any attention to me. They were stubborn. They did more evil things than their people who lived before them.

²⁷“Jeremiah, when you tell them all of that, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not answer.

²⁸“So say to them, ‘You are a nation that has not obeyed the Lord your God. You did not pay attention when you were corrected. Truth has died out. You do not tell the truth anymore.’ ”

²⁹The Lord says to the people of Jerusalem, “Cut off your hair. Throw it away. Sing a song of sadness on the bare hilltops. I am very angry with you. I have turned my back on you. I have deserted you.

The Valley of Death

³⁰“The people of Judah have done what is evil in my eyes,” announces the Lord. “They have set up statues of their gods. They have worshiped them in the house where my Name is. They have made my house ‘unclean.’ I hate those statues. ³¹The people have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. There they worship other gods. And there they sacrifice their children in the fire. That is something I did not command. It did not even enter my mind.

³²“So watch out!” announces the Lord. “The days are coming when people will not call it Topheth anymore. And they will not call it the Valley of Ben Hinnom either. Instead, they will call it the Valley of Death. They will bury the dead bodies of some people in Topheth. But they will run out of room. ³³Then they will not be able to bury the bodies of other people there. So the bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the wild animals. And no one will scare them away.

³⁴“I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness. The voices of brides and grooms will not be heard anymore. There will not be any sounds of joy in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. The land will become a desert.

8“At that time the tombs will be opened,” announces the Lord. “The bones of the kings and officials of Judah will be brought out. The bones of the priests and prophets will be removed. So will the bones of the people of Jerusalem. ²They will lie outside under the sun, moon and all of the stars.

“All of those people had loved and served those things. They had followed them and worshiped them. They had asked them for advice. So the bones of those people will not be gathered up or buried again. Instead, they will be like trash lying there on the ground.

³“Everyone who is left alive in this evil nation will want to die rather than live. That is what they will long for in the lands where I force them to go,” announces the Lord who rules over all.

The Lord Punishes His Sinful People

⁴“Jeremiah, tell them, ‘The Lord says,

“ ‘ “When people fall down, don’t they get up again?

When someone turns away, doesn’t he come back?

⁵Then why have the people of Jerusalem turned away from me?

Why do they always turn away?

They keep on telling lies.

They refuse to come back to me.

⁶I have listened carefully.

But they do not say what is right.

They refuse to turn away from their sins.

No one says, ‘What have I done?’

All of them go their own way.

They are like horses charging into battle.

⁷Storks know when to fly south.

So do doves, swifts and thrushes.

But my people do not know

what I require them to do.

⁸“ ‘ “How can you people say, ‘We are wise.

We have the law of the Lord’?

Actually, the teachers of the law have told lies about it.

Their pens have not written what is true.

⁹Those who think they are wise will be put to shame.

They will become terrified. They will be trapped.

They have not accepted my message.

So what kind of wisdom do they have?

¹⁰I will give their wives to other men.

I will give their fields to new owners.

Everyone wants to get richer and richer,

from the least important of them to the most important.

Prophets and priests alike

try to fool everyone they can.

¹¹They bandage the wounds of my people

as if they were not very deep.

‘Peace, peace,’ they say.

But there isn’t any peace.

¹²Are they ashamed of their hateful actions?

No. They do not feel any shame at all.

They do not even know how to blush.

So they will fall like others who have already fallen.

They will be brought down when I punish them,”

says the Lord.

¹³“ ‘ “I will take away their harvest,”

announces the Lord.

“There will not be any grapes on the vines.

The trees will not bear any figs.

The leaves on the trees will dry up.

What I have given them

will be taken away from them.” ’ ”

¹⁴Why are we sitting here?

Let’s gather together!

Let’s run to the cities that have high walls around them!

Let’s die there!

The Lord our God has sentenced us to death.

He has given us poisoned water to drink.

That’s because we’ve sinned against him.

¹⁵We hoped peace would come.

But nothing good has happened to us.

We hoped we would finally be healed.

But all we got was terror.

¹⁶When our enemy’s horses snort,

the noise is heard all the way from Dan.

When their stallions neigh,

the whole land trembles with fear.

They have come to destroy

the land and everything in it.

The city and everyone who lives there will be destroyed.

¹⁷“People of Judah, I will send poisonous snakes among you.

No one will be able to charm them.

And they will bite you,”

announces the Lord.

¹⁸Lord, my heart is weak inside me.

You comfort me when I’m sad.

¹⁹Listen to the cries of my people

from a land far away.

They cry out, “Isn’t the Lord in Zion?

Isn’t its King there anymore?”

The Lord says, “Why have they made me so angry

by worshiping their wooden gods?

Why have they made me angry

with their worthless statues

of gods from other lands?”

²⁰The people say, “The harvest is over.

The summer has ended.

And we still haven’t been saved.”

²¹My people are crushed, so I am crushed.

I sob, and I am filled with horror.

²²Isn’t there any healing lotion in Gilead?

Isn’t there a doctor there?

Then why doesn’t someone heal

the wounds of my people?

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