Jeremiah 15–17

Chapter 15

¹Then the Lord said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! ²And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord:

“Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence,

and those who are for the sword, to the sword;

those who are for famine, to famine,

and those who are for captivity, to captivity.” ’

³“I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the Lord: the sword to slay, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. ⁴And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.

⁵“Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem,

or who will bemoan you?

Who will turn aside

to ask about your welfare?

⁶You have rejected me, says the Lord,

you keep going backward;

so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you;—

I am weary of relenting.

⁷I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork

in the gates of the land;

I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people;

they did not turn from their ways.

⁸I have made their widows more in number

than the sand of the seas;

I have brought against the mothers of young men

a destroyer at noonday;

I have made anguish and terror

fall upon them suddenly.

⁹She who bore seven has languished;

she has swooned away;

her sun went down while it was yet day;

she has been shamed and disgraced.

And the rest of them I will give to the sword

before their enemies,

says the Lord.”

¹⁰Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me. ¹¹So let it be, O Lord,^x if I have not entreated thee for their good, if I have not pleaded with thee on behalf of the enemy in the time of trouble and in the time of distress! ¹²Can one break iron, iron from the north, and bronze?

¹³“Your wealth and your treasures I will give as spoil, without price, for all your sins, throughout all your territory. ¹⁴I will make you serve your enemies in a land which you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled which shall burn for ever.”

¹⁵O Lord, thou knowest;

remember me and visit me,

and take vengeance for me on my persecutors.

In thy forbearance take me not away;

know that for thy sake I bear reproach.

¹⁶Thy words were found, and I ate them,

and thy words became to me a joy

and the delight of my heart;

for I am called by thy name,

O Lord, God of hosts.

¹⁷I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,

nor did I rejoice;

I sat alone, because thy hand was upon me,

for thou hadst filled me with indignation.

¹⁸Why is my pain unceasing,

my wound incurable,

refusing to be healed?

Wilt thou be to me like a deceitful brook,

like waters that fail?

¹⁹Therefore thus says the Lord:

“If you return, I will restore you,

and you shall stand before me.

If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless,

you shall be as my mouth.

They shall turn to you,

but you shall not turn to them.

²⁰And I will make you to this people

a fortified wall of bronze;

they will fight against you,

but they shall not prevail over you,

for I am with you

to save you and deliver you,

says the Lord.

²¹I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,

and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.”

Chapter 16

¹The word of the Lord came to me: ²“You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. ³For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them and the fathers who begot them in this land: ⁴They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

⁵“For thus says the Lord: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, my steadfast love and mercy. ⁶Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them or cut himself or make himself bald for them. ⁷No one shall break bread for the mourner, to comfort him for the dead; nor shall any one give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother. ⁸You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. ⁹For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will make to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰“And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ ¹¹then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, ¹²and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me; ¹³therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ ¹⁵but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land which I gave to their fathers.

¹⁶“Behold, I am sending for many fishers, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. ¹⁷For my eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hid from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. ¹⁸And I will doubly recompense their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

¹⁹O Lord, my strength and my stronghold,

my refuge in the day of trouble,

to thee shall the nations come

from the ends of the earth and say:

“Our fathers have inherited nought but lies,

worthless things in which there is no profit.

²⁰Can man make for himself gods?

Such are no gods!”

²¹“Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”

Chapter 17

¹“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of their altars, ²while their children remember their altars and their Asherim, beside every green tree, and on the high hills, ³on the mountains in the open country. Your wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your sin^a throughout all your territory. ⁴You shall loosen your hand^b from your heritage which I gave to you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land which you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled which shall burn for ever.”

⁵Thus says the Lord:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man

and makes flesh his arm,

whose heart turns away from the Lord.

⁶He is like a shrub in the desert,

and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,

in an uninhabited salt land.

⁷“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

⁸He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

⁹The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately corrupt;

who can understand it?

¹⁰“I the Lord search the mind

and try the heart,

to give to every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his doings.”

¹¹Like the partridge that gathers a brood which she did not hatch,

so is he who gets riches but not by right;

in the midst of his days they will leave him,

and at his end he will be a fool.

¹²A glorious throne set on high from the beginning

is the place of our sanctuary.

¹³O Lord, the hope of Israel,

all who forsake thee shall be put to shame;

those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth,

for they have forsaken the Lord,

the fountain of living water.

¹⁴Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;

save me, and I shall be saved;

for thou art my praise.

¹⁵Behold, they say to me,

“Where is the word of the Lord?

Let it come!”

¹⁶I have not pressed thee to send evil,

nor have I desired the day of disaster,

thou knowest;

that which came out of my lips

was before thy face.

¹⁷Be not a terror to me;

thou art my refuge in the day of evil.

¹⁸Let those be put to shame who persecute me,

but let me not be put to shame;

let them be dismayed,

but let me not be dismayed;

bring upon them the day of evil;

destroy them with double destruction!

¹⁹Thus said the Lord to me: “Go and stand in the Benjamin^d Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, ²⁰and say: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. ²¹Thus says the Lord: Take heed for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. ²²And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the sabbath or do any work, but keep the sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers. ^…