But I protested, “Oh no, Lord, God! Look, I don’t know how to speak since I am only a youth.”

“Go and announce directly to Jerusalem that this is what the Lord says:

I remember the loyalty of your youth,
your love as a bride—
how you followed Me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.

Your own evil will discipline you;
your own apostasies will reprimand you.
Think it over and see how evil and bitter it is
for you to abandon the Lord your God
and to have no fear of Me.
This is the declaration
of the Lord God of Hosts.

I planted you, a choice vine
from the very best seed.
How then could you turn into
a degenerate, foreign vine?

How can you protest, “I am not defiled;
I have not followed the Baals”?
Look at your behavior in the valley;
acknowledge what you have done.
You are a swift young camel
twisting and turning on her way,

How skillfully you pursue love;
you also teach evil women your ways.

How unstable you are,
constantly changing your ways!
You will be put to shame by Egypt
just as you were put to shame by Assyria.

I thought: How I long to make you My sons
and give you a desirable land,
the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations.
I thought: You will call Me, my Father,
and never turn away from Me.

Wash the evil from your heart, Jerusalem,
so that you will be delivered.
How long will you harbor
malicious thoughts within you?

How long must I see the signal flag
and hear the sound of the ram’s horn?

“For My people are fools;
they do not know Me.
They are foolish children,
without understanding.
They are skilled in doing what is evil,
but they do not know how to do what is good.”

Don’t you see how they behave in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

“How can you claim, ‘We are wise;
the law of the Lord is with us’?
In fact, the lying pen of scribes
has produced falsehood.

For a sound of lamentation is heard from Zion:
How devastated we are.
We are greatly ashamed,
for we have abandoned the land;
our dwellings have been torn down.

How long will the land mourn
and the grass of every field wither?
Because of the evil of its residents,
animals and birds have been swept away,
for the people have said,
“He cannot see what our end will be.”

If you have raced with runners
and they have worn you out,
how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in a peaceful land,
what will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?

Your adulteries and your lustful neighing,
your heinous prostitution
on the hills, in the fields—
I have seen your detestable acts.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
You are unclean—
for how long yet?

Hear how they keep challenging me,
“Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come!”

Should good be repaid with evil?
Yet they have dug a pit for me.
Remember how I stood before You
to speak good on their behalf,
to turn Your anger from them.

You residents of Lebanon,
nestled among the cedars,
how you will groan when labor pains come on you,
agony like a woman in labor.

How long will this continue in the minds of the prophets prophesying lies, prophets of the deceit of their own minds?

For I am already bringing disaster on the city that bears My name, so how could you possibly go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth”—this is the declaration of the Lord of Hosts.

How dare you prophesy in the name of Yahweh, ‘This temple will become like Shiloh and this city will become an uninhabited ruin’!” Then all the people assembled against Jeremiah at the Lord’s temple.

How awful that day will be!
There will be none like it!
It will be a time of trouble for Jacob,
but he will be delivered out of it.

How long will you turn here and there,
faithless daughter?
For the Lord creates something new in the land—
a female will shelter a man.

Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us—how did you write all these words? At his dictation?”

Then Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “How have I sinned against you or your servants or these people that you have put me in prison?

Baldness is coming to Gaza.
Ashkelon will become silent,
a remnant of their valley.
How long will you gash yourself?

Oh, sword of the Lord!
How long will you be restless?
Go back to your sheath;
be still; be silent!

How can it rest
when the Lord has given it a command?
He has assigned it
against Ashkelon and the shore of the sea.

How can you say, “We are warriors—
mighty men ready for battle”?

Mourn for him, all you surrounding nations,
everyone who knows his name.
Say: How the mighty scepter is shattered,
the glorious staff!

“How broken it is! They wail! How Moab has turned his back! He is ashamed. Moab will become a laughingstock and a shock to all those around him.”

How can the city of praise not be abandoned,
the town that brings Me joy?

How the hammer of the whole earth
is cut down and smashed!
What a horror Babylon has become
among the nations!

How Sheshach has been captured,
the praise of the whole earth seized.
What a horror Babylon has become
among the nations!