Jeremiah 6–8

Chapter 6

¹Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin,

from the midst of Jerusalem!

Blow the trumpet in Tekoa,

and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem;

for evil looms out of the north,

and great destruction.

²The comely and delicately bred I will destroy,

the daughter of Zion.

³Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her;

they shall pitch their tents around her,

they shall pasture, each in his place.

⁴“Prepare war against her;

up, and let us attack at noon!”

“Woe to us, for the day declines,

for the shadows of evening lengthen!”

⁵“Up, and let us attack by night,

and destroy her palaces!”

⁶For thus says the Lord of hosts:

“Hew down her trees;

cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem.

This is the city which must be punished;

there is nothing but oppression within her.

⁷As a well keeps its water fresh,

so she keeps fresh her wickedness;

violence and destruction are heard within her;

sickness and wounds are ever before me.

⁸Be warned, O Jerusalem,

lest I be alienated from you;

lest I make you a desolation,

an uninhabited land.”

⁹Thus says the Lord of hosts:

“Glean^g thoroughly as a vine

the remnant of Israel;

like a grape-gatherer pass your hand again

over its branches.”

¹⁰To whom shall I speak and give warning,

that they may hear?

Behold, their ears are closed,

they cannot listen;

behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn,

they take no pleasure in it.

¹¹Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;

I am weary of holding it in.

“Pour it out upon the children in the street,

and upon the gatherings of young men, also;

both husband and wife shall be taken,

the old folk and the very aged.

¹²Their houses shall be turned over to others,

their fields and wives together;

for I will stretch out my hand

against the inhabitants of the land,”

says the Lord.

¹³“For from the least to the greatest of them,

every one is greedy for unjust gain;

and from prophet to priest,

every one deals falsely.

¹⁴They have healed the wound of my people lightly,

saying, ‘Peace, peace,’

when there is no peace.

¹⁵Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?

No, they were not at all ashamed;

they did not know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,”

says the Lord.

¹⁶Thus says the Lord:

“Stand by the roads, and look,

and ask for the ancient paths,

where the good way is; and walk in it,

and find rest for your souls.

But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

¹⁷I set watchmen over you, saying,

‘Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!’

But they said, ‘We will not give heed.’

¹⁸Therefore hear, O nations,

and know, O congregation, what will happen to them.

¹⁹Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing evil upon this people,

the fruit of their devices,

because they have not given heed to my words;

and as for my law, they have rejected it.

²⁰To what purpose does frankincense come to me from Sheba,

or sweet cane from a distant land?

Your burnt offerings are not acceptable,

nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.

²¹Therefore thus says the Lord:

‘Behold, I will lay before this people

stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble;

fathers and sons together,

neighbor and friend shall perish.’ ”

²²Thus says the Lord:

“Behold, a people is coming from the north country,

a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth.

²³They lay hold on bow and spear,

they are cruel and have no mercy,

the sound of them is like the roaring sea;

they ride upon horses,

set in array as a man for battle,

against you, O daughter of Zion!”

²⁴We have heard the report of it,

our hands fall helpless;

anguish has taken hold of us,

pain as of a woman in travail.

²⁵Go not forth into the field,

nor walk on the road;

for the enemy has a sword,

terror is on every side.

²⁶O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth,

and roll in ashes;

make mourning as for an only son,

most bitter lamentation;

for suddenly the destroyer

will come upon us.

²⁷“I have made you an assayer and tester among my people,

that you may know and assay their ways.

²⁸They are all stubbornly rebellious,

going about with slanders;

they are bronze and iron,

all of them act corruptly.

²⁹The bellows blow fiercely,

the lead is consumed by the fire;

in vain the refining goes on,

for the wicked are not removed.

³⁰Refuse silver they are called,

for the Lord has rejected them.”

Chapter 7

¹The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ²“Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. ³Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will let you dwell in this place. ⁴Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

⁵“For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, ⁶if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, ⁷then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers for ever.

⁸“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. ⁹Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, ¹⁰and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? ¹¹Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, says the Lord. ¹²Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. ¹³And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, ¹⁴therefore I will do to the house which is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. ¹⁵And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.

¹⁶“As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you. ¹⁷Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. ¹⁹Is it I whom they provoke? says the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own confusion? ²⁰Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”

²¹Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. ²²For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. ²³But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ ²⁴But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. ²⁵From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; ²⁶yet they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

²⁷“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. ²⁸And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

²⁹Cut off your hair and cast it away;

raise a lamentation on the bare heights,

for the Lord has rejected and forsaken

the generation of his wrath.’

³⁰“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it. ³¹And they have built the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. ³²Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. ³³And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth; and none will frighten them away. ³⁴And I will make to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall become a waste.

Chapter 8

¹“At that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its princes, 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; ²and 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 gone after, and which they have sought and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. ³Death 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.

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

When men fall,…