Jeremiah 8–9

⁸At that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs,^{* 2}and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped, and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground.^{* 3}Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the Lord of hosts.^*

The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation

⁴You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:

When people fall, do they not get up again?

If they go astray, do they not turn back?^*

⁵Why then has this people^e turned away

in perpetual faithlessness?

They have held fast to deceit;

they have refused to return.^*

⁶I have given heed and listened,

but they do not speak honestly;

no one repents of wickedness,

saying, “What have I done!”

All of them turn to their own course

like a horse plunging headlong into battle.^*

⁷Even the stork in the heavens

knows its times,

and the turtledove, swallow, and crane^f

observe the time of their coming,

but my people do not know

the ordinance of the Lord.^*

⁸How can you say, “We are wise,

and the law of the Lord is with us,”

when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes

has made it into a lie?^*

⁹The wise shall be put to shame;

they shall be dismayed and taken;

since they have rejected the word of the Lord,

what wisdom is in them?^*

¹⁰Therefore I will give their wives to others

and their fields to conquerors,

because from the least to the greatest

everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

from prophet to priest,

everyone deals falsely.^*

¹¹They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly,

saying, “Peace, peace,”

when there is no peace.^*

¹²They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,

yet they were not at all ashamed;

they did not know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

says the Lord.^*

¹³I will surely gather them,^g says the Lord;

there are no grapes on the vine

nor figs on the fig tree;

even the leaves are withered,

and what I gave them has passed away from them.^h*

¹⁴Why do we sit still?

Gather together; let us go into the fortified cities

and perish there,

for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish

and has given us poisoned water to drink

because we have sinned against the Lord.^*

¹⁵We look for peace but find no good,

for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.^*

¹⁶The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;

at the sound of the neighing of their stallions

the whole land quakes.

They come and devour the land and all that fills it,

the city and those who live in it.^*

¹⁷See, I am letting snakes loose among you,

adders that cannot be charmed,

and they shall bite you,

says the Lord.^*

The Prophet Mourns for the People

¹⁸My joy is gone; grief is upon me;

my heart is sick.

¹⁹Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people

from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,

with their foreign idols?”)^*

²⁰“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

and we are not saved.”

²¹For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,

I mourn, and horror has seized me.^*

²²Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of the daughter of my people

not been restored?^*

⁹ⁱO that my head were a spring of water

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

so that I might weep day and night

for the slain of the daughter of my people!^*

^2jO that I had in the desert

a traveler’s lodging place,

that I might leave my people

and go away from them!

For they are all adulterers,

a band of traitors.^*

³They bend their tongues like bows;

they have grown strong in the land for falsehood and not for truth,

for they proceed from evil to evil,

and they do not know me, says the Lord.^*

⁴Beware of your neighbors,

and put no trust in any of your kin,

for all your kin are supplanters,

and every neighbor goes around like a slanderer.^*

⁵They all deceive their neighbors,

and no one speaks the truth;

they have taught their tongues to speak lies;

they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.^k*

⁶Oppression upon oppression, deceit^l upon deceit!

They refuse to know me, says the Lord.^*

⁷Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:

I will now refine and test them,

for what else can I do with the daughter of my people?^*

⁸Their tongue is a deadly arrow;

it speaks deceit through the mouth.

They all speak friendly words to their neighbors

but inwardly are planning to lay an ambush.^*

⁹Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord,

and shall I not bring retribution

on a nation such as this?^*

¹⁰Take up^m weeping and wailing for the mountains

and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness,

because they are laid waste so that no one passes through,

and the lowing of cattle is not heard;

both the birds of the air and the animals

have fled and are gone.^*

¹¹I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins,

a lair of jackals,

and I will make the towns of Judah a desolation,

without inhabitant.^*

¹²Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, so that they may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?^{* 13}And the Lord says: Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accordance with it^{* 14}but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them.^{* 15}Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am feeding this people with wormwood and giving them poisonous water to drink.^{* 16}I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have consumed them.^*

The People Mourn in Judgment

¹⁷Thus says the Lord of hosts:

Consider and call for the mourning women to come;

send for the skilled women to come;^*

¹⁸let them quickly raise a dirge over us,

so that our eyes may run down with tears

and our eyelids flow with water.^*

¹⁹For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion:

“How we are ruined!

We are utterly shamed

because we have left the land,

because they have cast down our dwellings.”^*

²⁰Hear, O women, the word of the Lord,

and let your ears receive the word of his mouth;

teach to your daughters a dirge

and each to her neighbor a lament.^*

²¹“Death has come up into our windows;

it has entered our palaces

to cut off the children from the streets

and the young men from the squares.”^*

²²Speak! Thus says the Lord:

“Human corpses shall fall

like dung upon the open field,

like sheaves behind the reaper,

and no one shall gather them.”^*

²³Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom; do not let the mighty boast in their might; do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth;^{* 24}but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.^*

²⁵The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will attend to all those who are circumcised only in the foreskin:^{* 26}Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all those with shaved temples who live in the desert. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.^*