Jeremiah 8–9

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, do they not rise again?

If one turns away, does he not return?

⁵Why then has this people turned away

in perpetual backsliding?

They hold fast to deceit,

they refuse to return.

⁶I have given heed and listened,

but they have not spoken aright;

no man repents of his wickedness,

saying, ‘What have I done?’

Every one turns to his own course,

like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

⁷Even the stork in the heavens

knows her times;

and the turtledove, swallow, and crane^j

keep the time of their coming;

but my people know not

the ordinance of the Lord.

⁸“How can you say, ‘We are wise,

and the law of the Lord is with us’?

But, behold, the false pen of the scribes

has made it into a lie.

⁹The wise men shall be put to shame,

they shall be dismayed and taken;

lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord,

and 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

every one is greedy for unjust gain;

from prophet to priest

every one deals falsely.

¹¹They have healed the wound of my people lightly,

saying, ‘Peace, peace,’

when there is no peace.

¹²Were 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 the fallen;

when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

says the Lord.

¹³When I would gather them, 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.”^k

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 looked for peace, but no good came,

for a time of healing, but behold, terror.

¹⁶“The 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 dwell in it.

¹⁷For behold, I am sending among you serpents,

adders which cannot be charmed,

and they shall bite you,”

says the Lord.

¹⁸My grief is beyond healing,^l

my heart is sick within me.

¹⁹Hark, the cry of the daughter of my people

from the length and breadth of the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

Is her King not in her?”

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

and with their foreign idols?”

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

and we are not saved.”

²¹For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded,

I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on 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?

Chapter 9

¹O that my head were waters,

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

that I might weep day and night

for the slain of the daughter of my people!

²ⁿO that I had in the desert

a wayfarers’ lodging place,

that I might leave my people

and go away from them!

For they are all adulterers,

a company of treacherous men.

³They bend their tongue like a bow;

falsehood and not truth has grown strong^o in the land;

for they proceed from evil to evil,

and they do not know me, says the Lord.

⁴Let every one beware of his neighbor,

and put no trust in any brother;

for every brother is a supplanter,

and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.

⁵Every one deceives his neighbor,

and no one speaks the truth;

they have taught their tongue to speak lies;

they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.^p

⁶Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit,

they refuse to know me, says the Lord.

⁷Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:

“Behold, I will refine them and test them,

for what else can I do, because of my people?

⁸Their tongue is a deadly arrow;

it speaks deceitfully;

with his mouth each speaks peaceably to his neighbor,

but in his heart he plans an ambush for him.

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

and shall I not avenge myself

on a nation such as this?

¹⁰“Take up^q 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 beasts

have fled and are gone.

¹¹I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins,

a lair of jackals;

and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,

without inhabitant.”

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

¹⁷Thus says the Lord of hosts:

“Consider, and call for the mourning women to come;

send for the skilful women to come;

¹⁸let them make haste and raise a wailing over us,

that our eyes may run down with tears,

and our eyelids gush 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 ear receive the word of his mouth;

teach to your daughters a lament,

and each to her neighbor a dirge.

²¹For death has come up into our windows,

it has entered our palaces,

cutting off the children from the streets

and the young men from the squares.

²²Speak, “Thus says the Lord:

‘The dead bodies of men shall fall

like dung upon the open field,

like sheaves after the reaper,

and none shall gather them.’ ”

²³Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; ²⁴but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord.”

²⁵“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised but yet uncircumcised— ²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert that cut the corners of their hair; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”