Has a nation changed their gods who are yet no gods? But My people have changed their Glory for that which does not profit.

Is Israel a servant? Or is he a servant of the house? Why has he become a prey?

In vain I have stricken your sons; they received no correction. Your own sword has devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.

Yes, you shall go out from this place, and your hands on your head. For Jehovah has rejected those in whom you trust, and you will not prosper by them.

Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no latter rain; and you had a harlot's forehead, you refused to be ashamed.

Jehovah also said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and has fornicated there.

And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but with falsehood, says Jehovah.

And Jehovah said to me, The backsliding Israel has justified herself more than treacherous Judah.

For shame has eaten up the labor of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.

The lion has come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the nations has set out; he has left his place to make your land a waste. Your cities will fall into ruins without inhabitant.

For so Jehovah has said, The whole land shall be desolate, yet I will not make a full end.

But this people has a revolting and a rebellious heart; they have revolted and are gone.

An astounding and horrible thing has happened in the land.

For so has Jehovah of Hosts said, Cut down trees and cast a mound against Jerusalem! She is the city to be visited; there is nothing but oppression in her midst.

We have heard the rumor of it; our hands become feeble; anguish has taken hold of us, and pain, like a woman in labor.

Reprobate silver they call them, because Jehovah has rejected them.

Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I also have seen, says Jehovah.

But you shall say to them, This is a nation which does not obey the voice of Jehovah their God, nor receives instruction; truth has perished, and is cut off from their mouth.

Cut off your hair and throw it away, and take up a weeping on the high places. For Jehovah has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.

Why has this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a never-ending backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return.

How do you say, We are wise, and the Law of Jehovah is with us? Lo, certainly the lying pen of the scribes has written falsely.

Why do we sit still? Gather yourselves, and let us enter into the fortified cities, and let us be silent there. For Jehovah our God has put us to silence, and has given us poisonous water to drink, because we have sinned against Jehovah.

For the breaking of the daughter of my people I am broken; I am in gloom; horror has seized me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the healing of the daughter of My people not come?

Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of Jehovah has spoken, that he may declare it? Why does the land perish and burn up like a wilderness, so that none passes through?

For death has come up into our windows, and has entered into our houses, to cut off the children from outside and the young men from the streets.

He has made the earth by His power; He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens by His judgment.

Behold, the noise of the rumor has come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a den of jackals.

What is to My beloved in My house, since she has committed her many evils? And has the holy flesh caused your evil to pass from you? How then do you exult?

Jehovah called your name, a green olive tree, fair, with fine fruit. With the sound of a great storm He has set fire to it, and its branches are worthless.

And Jehovah of Hosts who planted you has spoken evil against you, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done to themselves to provoke Me to anger by offering incense to Baal.

One has made it a desolation, it mourns to Me. The whole land is made desolate because no man lays it to heart.

Hear and give ear; do not be proud; for Jehovah has spoken.

The cities of the south have been shut up, and none are opening; Judah has been exiled, all of it has been peacefully exiled.

Judah mourns, and its gates droop. They are black to the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem has gone up.

Have You utterly rejected Judah? Or has Your soul hated Zion? Why have You stricken us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but no good came; and for the time of healing, and behold, trouble!

She who bore seven languishes; she has breathed out her life; her sun has gone down while it was yet day. She has been ashamed and humiliated; and I will deliver the rest of them to the sword before their enemies, says Jehovah.

And I will make you pass with your enemies into a land which you do not know. For a fire has been kindled in My anger; it shall burn against you.

Why has my pain been without end, and why is my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You surely are to me like a deceitful brook, waters that cannot be trusted.

And it shall be, when you declare to this people all these words, and they shall say to you, Why has Jehovah pronounced all this great evil against us? Or what is our iniquity, or what is our sin that we have committed against Jehovah our God?

Therefore so says Jehovah, Ask now among the nations; who has heard the like of this? The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.

And it happened on the next day, Pashur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, Jehovah has not called your name Pashur, but Terror from All Around.

For whenever I speak, I cry out, I cry violence and ruin; for the Word of Jehovah has been a reproach and a cause of mocking to me all day.

Sing to Jehovah, praise Jehovah; for He has delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers.

And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say each one to his neighbor, Why has Jehovah done this to this great city?

I spoke to you in your prosperity; but you said, I will not hear. This has been your way from your youth, for you have not obeyed My voice.

My heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of Jehovah, and because of the Words of His holiness.

So Jehovah of Hosts says this concerning the prophets: Behold, I will feed them wormwood, and make them drink poisonous water; for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone forth into all the land.

They still say to those who despise Me, Jehovah has said, You shall have peace! And they say to everyone who walks after the stubbornness of his own heart, No evil shall come on you!

For who has stood in the counsel of Jehovah, and hears His Word? Who has listened to His Word and heard it?

Behold, the tempest of Jehovah has gone forth in fury, a whirling tempest. It shall whirl on the head of the wicked.

The anger of Jehovah shall not return, until He has done and until He has set up the purposes of His heart; in later days you shall understand it perfectly.

The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream. And he who has My Word, let him speak My Word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? says Jehovah.

So you shall say each one to his neighbor, and each one to his brother, What has Jehovah answered? And what has Jehovah spoken?

So you shall say to the prophet, What has Jehovah answered you? And what has Jehovah spoken?

From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, even to this day, that is the twenty-third year, the Word of Jehovah has come to me, and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking. But you have not listened.

And Jehovah has sent to you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but you have not listened nor bowed down your ear to hear.

They said, Turn again now, each one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that Jehovah has given to you and to your fathers forever and ever.

And I will bring on that land all My Words which I have spoken against it, all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.

A noise shall come to the ends of the earth; for Jehovah has a controversy with the nations; He will enter into judgment with all flesh. He will give those who are wicked to the sword, says Jehovah.

A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and a howling of the choice ones of the flock shall be heard; for Jehovah has spoiled their pasture.

Like the lion, He has left His den; for their land is wasted because of the oppressor's pressing fury, and because of His fierce anger.

And the priests and the prophets spoke to the rulers and to all the people, saying, Let a death sentence be for this man, for he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your ears.

So now make your ways and your doings good, and obey the voice of Jehovah your God. And Jehovah will repent of the evil that He has spoken against you.

But know for certain that if you put me to death you shall surely bring innocent blood on yourselves, and on this city, and on its people. For truly Jehovah has sent me to you to speak all these Words in your ears.

Then the rulers and all the people said to the priests and to the prophets, There is not a sentence of death for this man; for he has spoken to us in the name of Jehovah our God.

Why will you die, you and your people, by the sword, by the famine, and by the plague, as Jehovah has spoken against the nation that will not serve the king of Babylon?

As for the prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then the prophet shall be known, that Jehovah has truly sent him.

Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah. Jehovah has not sent you, but you make this people to trust in a lie.

Because you have said, Jehovah has raised us up prophets in Babylon;

Jehovah has made you priest instead of Jehoiada the priest, to be officers in the house of Jehovah, over every madman who prophesies, that you should put him into the stocks and into the collar.

Send to all the exiles, saying, So says Jehovah concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite: Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you, and I did not send him, and he caused you to trust in a lie,

therefore so says Jehovah, Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his seed. He shall not have a man to dwell among this people; nor shall he behold the good which I shall do for My people, says Jehovah, because he has taught rebellion against Jehovah.

The fierce anger of Jehovah shall not return until He has done it, and until He has fulfilled the purposes of His heart. In the latter days you shall understand it.

Jehovah has appeared to me from afar, saying, Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you.

For Jehovah has redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of the one stronger than he.

How long will you turn to and fro, O faithless daughter? For Jehovah has created a new thing in the land; a woman shall enclose a man.

Behold, the siege mounds have come to the city to take it; and the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who fight against it, because of the sword, and of the famine, and of the plague. And what You have spoken has happened; and, behold, You saw it.

For this city has been to Me as a cause of My anger and of My fury from the day that they built it even to this day; that I should remove it from before My face;

Do you not consider what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which Jehovah has chosen, He has even cast them off? So they have despised My people, that they should be no more a nation before them.

At the end of seven years each man should let go his brother, a Hebrew, and who has been sold to him. And when he has served you six years, you shall let him go free from you. But your fathers did not listen to me, nor bow down their ears.

So we have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab our father in all that he has commanded us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters;

Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have done the commandment of their father, which He commanded them; but this people has not listened to Me;

And Jeremiah said to the house of the Rechabites, So says Jehovah of Hosts, the God of Israel: Because you have obeyed the command of Jonadab your father, and have kept all his precepts, and have done according to all that he has commanded you;

It may be they will present their prayer before Jehovah, and will return, each one from his evil way. For great is the anger and the fury that Jehovah has spoken against this people.

Take for yourself another scroll, and write in it all the former Words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned.

So says Jehovah, the God of Israel: You shall say this to the king of Judah, who sent you to Me to inquire of Me: Behold, Pharaoh's army, which has come forth to help you, shall return to Egypt into their own land.

But if you refuse to go out, this is the Word that Jehovah has shown to me:

And the chief of the executioners took Jeremiah and said to him, Jehovah your God has spoken this evil against this place.

And Jehovah has brought it, and has done according as He has said, Because you have sinned against Jehovah and have not obeyed His voice, therefore this thing has come on you.

And while he had not yet gone back, he said, Go back also to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has made governor over the cities of Judah, and live with him among the people. Or go wherever it seems right to you to go. So the chief of the executioners gave him food and a reward, and let him go.

And they said to him, You certainly know that Baalis the king of the Ammonites has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to kill you. But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam did not believe them.

For so says Jehovah of Hosts, the God of Israel: As My anger and My fury has been poured forth on the people of Jerusalem, so shall My fury be poured forth on you when you shall enter into Egypt. And you shall be a curse, and a wonder, and a shame, and a reproach; and you shall see this place no more.

Jehovah has said concerning you, O remnant of Judah, Do not go into Egypt. Know certainly that I have warned you this day.

And I have declared it to you today; but you have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah your God, nor anything for which He has sent me to you.

Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud men, spoke then, saying to Jeremiah, You speak falsely! Jehovah our God has not sent you to say, Do not go to Egypt to live there.

So that none of the remnant of Judah who has gone into the land of Egypt to live there shall escape or remain, that they should return into the land of Judah to which they have a desire to return to live there. For none shall return except those who escape.

Because you have burned incense, and because you have sinned against Jehovah, and have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah, nor walked in His Law, nor in His statutes, nor did you walk in His testimonies, therefore this evil has happened to you, as at this day.

You said, Woe is me now, for Jehovah has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.

For this is the day of the Lord Jehovah of Hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Himself of His foes. And the sword shall devour, and it shall be filled and made drunk with their blood, for the Lord Jehovah of Hosts has a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.