Jeremiah 23–25

Chapter 23

¹“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” says the Lord. ²Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. ³Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. ⁴I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, says the Lord.

⁵“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ⁶In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

⁷“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when men shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ ⁸but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he^m had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”

⁹Concerning the prophets:

My heart is broken within me,

all my bones shake;

I am like a drunken man,

like a man overcome by wine,

because of the Lord

and because of his holy words.

¹⁰For the land is full of adulterers;

because of the curse the land mourns,

and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up.

Their course is evil,

and their might is not right.

¹¹“Both prophet and priest are ungodly;

even in my house I have found their wickedness,

says the Lord.

¹²Therefore their way shall be to them

like slippery paths in the darkness,

into which they shall be driven and fall;

for I will bring evil upon them

in the year of their punishment,

says the Lord.

¹³In the prophets of Samaria

I saw an unsavory thing:

they prophesied by Baal

and led my people Israel astray.

¹⁴But in the prophets of Jerusalem

I have seen a horrible thing:

they commit adultery and walk in lies;

they strengthen the hands of evildoers,

so that no one turns from his wickedness;

all of them have become like Sodom to me,

and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

¹⁵Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets:

“Behold, I will feed them with wormwood,

and give them poisoned water to drink;

for from the prophets of Jerusalem

ungodliness has gone forth into all the land.”

¹⁶Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. ¹⁷They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to every one who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No evil shall come upon you.’ ”

¹⁸For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord

to perceive and to hear his word,

or who has given heed to his word and listened?

¹⁹Behold, the storm of the Lord!

Wrath has gone forth,

a whirling tempest;

it will burst upon the head of the wicked.

²⁰The anger of the Lord will not turn back

until he has executed and accomplished

the intents of his mind.

In the latter days you will understand it clearly.

²¹“I did not send the prophets,

yet they ran;

I did not speak to them,

yet they prophesied.

²²But if they had stood in my council,

then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,

and they would have turned them from their evil way,

and from the evil of their doings.

²³“Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? ²⁴Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. ²⁵I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ ²⁶How long shall there be liesⁿ in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, ²⁷who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams which they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal? ²⁸Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. ²⁹Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces? ³⁰Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words from one another. ³¹Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their tongues and say, ‘Says the Lord.’ ³²Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the Lord.

³³“When one of this people, or a prophet, or a priest asks you, ‘What is the burden of the Lord?’ you shall say to them, ‘You are the burden,^o and I will cast you off, says the Lord.’ ³⁴And as for the prophet, priest, or one of the people who says, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ I will punish that man and his household. ³⁵Thus shall you say, every one to his neighbor and every one to his brother, ‘What has the Lord answered?’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ ³⁶But ‘the burden of the Lord’ you shall mention no more, for the burden is every man’s own word, and you pervert the words of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God. ³⁷Thus you shall say to the prophet, ‘What has the Lord answered you?’ or ‘What has the Lord spoken?’ ³⁸But if you say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have said these words, “The burden of the Lord,” when I sent to you, saying, “You shall not say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ ” ³⁹therefore, behold, I will surely lift you up and cast you away from my presence, you and the city which I gave to you and your fathers. ⁴⁰And I will bring upon you everlasting reproach and perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.’ ”

Chapter 24

¹After Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, together with the princes of Judah, the craftsmen, and the smiths, and had brought them to Babylon, the Lord showed me this vision: Behold, two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord. ²One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. ³And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.”

⁴Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁵“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. ⁶I will set my eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not uproot them. ⁷I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

⁸“But thus says the Lord: Like the bad figs which are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, his princes, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. ⁹I will make them a horror^p to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse in all the places where I shall drive them. ¹⁰And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land which I gave to them and their fathers.”

Chapter 25

¹The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon), ²which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ³“For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened. ⁴You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, ⁵saying, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and wrong doings, and dwell upon the land which the Lord has given to you and your fathers from of old and for ever; ⁶do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.’ ⁷Yet you have not listened to me, says the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm.

⁸“Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, ⁹behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, says the Lord, and for Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these nations round about; I will utterly destroy them, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting reproach.^{q 10}Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. ¹¹This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. ¹²Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste. ¹³I will bring upon that land all the words which I…