The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah.

It also came throughout the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah, king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.

I chose you before I formed you in the womb;
I set you apart before you were born.
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Then the Lord reached out His hand, touched my mouth, and told me:

I have now filled your mouth with My words.

“Now, get ready. Stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not be intimidated by them or I will cause you to cower before them.

“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.

This is what the Lord says:

What fault did your fathers find in Me
that they went so far from Me,
followed worthless idols,
and became worthless themselves?

They stopped asking, “Where is the Lord
who brought us from the land of Egypt,
who led us through the wilderness,
through a land of deserts and ravines,
through a land of drought and darkness,
a land no one traveled through
and where no one lived?”

The priests quit asking, “Where is the Lord?”
The experts in the law no longer knew Me,
and the rulers rebelled against Me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal
and followed useless idols.

Therefore, I will bring a case against you again.
This is the Lord’s declaration.
I will bring a case against your children’s children.

Has a nation ever exchanged its gods?
(But they were not gods!)
Yet My people have exchanged their Glory
for useless idols.

The young lions have roared at him;
they have roared loudly.
They have laid waste his land.
His cities are in ruins, without inhabitants.

The men of Memphis and Tahpanhes
have also broken your skull.

Have you not brought this on yourself
by abandoning the Lord your God
while He was leading you along the way?

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.

For long ago I broke your yoke;
I tore off your chains.
You insisted, “I will not serve!”
On every high hill
and under every green tree
you lie down like a prostitute.

Even if you wash with lye
and use a great amount of soap,
the stain of your sin is still in front of Me.
This is the Lord God’s declaration.

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,

Keep your feet from going bare
and your throat from thirst.
But you say, “It’s hopeless;
I love strangers,
and I will continue to follow them.”

say to a tree, “You are my father,”
and to a stone, “You gave birth to me.”
For they have turned their back to Me
and not their face,
yet in their time of disaster they beg,
“Rise up and save us!”

But where are your gods you made for yourself?
Let them rise up and save you
in your time of disaster if they can,
for your gods are as numerous as your cities, Judah.

I have struck down your children in vain;
they would not accept discipline.
Your own sword has devoured your prophets
like a ravaging lion.

Evil generation,
pay attention to the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel
or a land of dense darkness?
Why do My people claim,
“We will go where we want;
we will no longer come to You”?

Can a young woman forget her jewelry
or a bride her wedding sash?
Yet My people have forgotten Me
for countless days.

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

Moreover, your skirts are stained
with the blood of the innocent poor.
You did not catch them breaking and entering.
But in spite of all these things

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.

Moreover, you will be led out from here
with your hands on your head
since the Lord has rejected those you trust;
you will not succeed even with their help.

Look to the barren heights and see.
Where have you not been immoral?
You sat waiting for them beside the highways
like a nomad in the desert.
You have defiled the land
with your prostitution and wickedness.

Will He bear a grudge forever?
Will He be endlessly infuriated?”
This is what you have said,
but you have done the evil things
you are capable of.

Only acknowledge your guilt—
you have rebelled against the Lord your God.
You have scattered your favors to strangers
under every green tree
and have not obeyed My voice.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

“Return, you faithless children”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“for I am your master, and I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

I will give you shepherds who are loyal to Me, and they will shepherd you with knowledge and skill.

When you multiply and increase in the land, in those days”—the Lord’s declaration—“no one will say any longer, ‘The ark of the Lord’s covenant.’ It will never come to mind, and no one will remember or miss it. It will never again be made.

In those days the house of Judah will join with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land I have given your ancestors to inherit.”

Return, you faithless children.
I will heal your unfaithfulness.
“Here we are, coming to You,
for You are the Lord our God.

Surely, falsehood comes from the hills,
commotion from the mountains,
but the salvation of Israel
is only in the Lord our God.

From the time of our youth
the shameful one has consumed
what our fathers have worked for—
their flocks and their herds,
their sons and their daughters.

Let us lie down in our shame;
let our disgrace cover us.
We have sinned against the Lord our God,
both we and our fathers,
from the time of our youth even to this day.
We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

If you return, Israel—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
you will return to Me,
if you remove your detestable idols
from My presence
and do not waver,

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord;
remove the foreskin of your hearts,
men of Judah and residents of Jerusalem.
Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire
and burn with no one to extinguish it
because of your evil deeds.

A lion has gone up from his thicket;
a destroyer of nations has set out.
He has left his lair
to make your land a waste.
Your cities will be reduced to uninhabited ruins.

I said, “Oh no, Lord God, You have certainly deceived this people and Jerusalem, by announcing, ‘You will have peace,’ while a sword is at our throats.”

“At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, ‘A searing wind blows from the barren heights in the wilderness on the way to My dear people. It comes not to winnow or to sift;

Look, he advances like clouds;
his chariots are like a storm.
His horses are swifter than eagles.
Woe to us, for we are ruined!

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

Warn the nations: Look!
Proclaim to Jerusalem:
Those who besiege are coming
from a distant land;
they raise their voices
against the cities of Judah.

Your way of life and your actions
have brought this on you.
This is your punishment. It is very bitter,
because it has reached your heart!

Disaster after disaster is reported
because the whole land is destroyed.
Suddenly my tents are destroyed,
my tent curtains, in a moment.

“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.”

I looked at the mountains,
and they were quaking;
all the hills shook.

I looked, and the fertile field was a wilderness.
All its cities were torn down
because of the Lord
and His burning anger.

Because of this, the earth will mourn;
the skies above will grow dark.
I have spoken; I have planned,
and I will not relent or turn back from it.

And you, devastated one, what are you doing
that you dress yourself in scarlet,
that you adorn yourself with gold jewelry,
that you enlarge your eyes with paint?
You beautify yourself for nothing.
Your lovers reject you;
they want to take your life.

When they say, “As the Lord lives,”
they are swearing falsely.

Lord, don’t Your eyes look for faithfulness?
You have struck them, but they felt no pain.
You finished them off,
but they refused to accept discipline.
They made their faces harder than rock,
and they refused to return.

Then I thought:

They are just the poor;
they have played the fool.
For they don’t understand the way of the Lord,
the justice of their God.

Therefore, a lion from the forest will strike them down.
A wolf from an arid plain will ravage them.
A leopard keeps watch over their cities.
Anyone who leaves them will be torn to pieces
because their rebellious acts are many,
their unfaithful deeds numerous.

Why should I forgive you?
Your children have abandoned Me
and sworn by those who are not gods.
I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery;
they gashed themselves at the prostitute’s house.

They are well-fed, eager stallions,
each neighing after someone else’s wife.

They have contradicted the Lord
and insisted, “It won’t happen.
Harm won’t come to us;
we won’t see sword or famine.”

Therefore, this is what the Lord God of Hosts says:

Because you have spoken this word,
I am going to make My words
become fire in your mouth.
These people are the wood,
and the fire will consume them.

Their quiver is like an open grave;
they are all mighty warriors.

They will consume your harvest and your food.
They will consume your sons and your daughters.
They will consume your flocks and your herds.
They will consume your vines and your fig trees.
They will destroy with the sword
your fortified cities in which you trust.

When people ask, ‘For what offense has the Lord our God done all these things to us?’ You will respond to them: Just as you abandoned Me and served foreign gods in your land, so will you serve strangers in a land that is not yours.

They have not said to themselves,
‘Let’s fear the Lord our God,
who gives the rain, both early and late, in its season,
who guarantees to us the fixed weeks of the harvest.’

Your guilty acts have diverted these things from you.
Your sins have withheld My bounty from you,

Like a cage full of birds,
so their houses are full of deceit.
Therefore they have grown powerful and rich.

Set them apart for war against her;
rise up, let’s attack at noon.
Woe to us, for the day is passing;
the evening shadows grow long.

Be warned, Jerusalem,
or I will turn away from you;
I will make you a desolation,
a land without inhabitants.

This is what the Lord of Hosts says:

Glean the remnant of Israel
as thoroughly as a vine.
Pass your hand once more like a grape gatherer
over the branches.

Who can I speak to and give such a warning
that they will listen?
Look, their ear is uncircumcised,
so they cannot pay attention.
See, the word of the Lord has become contemptible to them—
they find no pleasure in it.

Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently?
They weren’t at all ashamed.
They can no longer feel humiliation.
Therefore, they will fall among the fallen.
When I punish them, they will collapse,
says the Lord.

What use to Me is frankincense from Sheba
or sweet cane from a distant land?
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable;
your sacrifices do not please Me.

They grasp bow and javelin.
They are cruel and show no mercy.
Their voice roars like the sea,
and they ride on horses,
lined up like men in battle formation
against you, Daughter Zion.

We have heard about it,
and we are discouraged.
Distress has seized us—
pain like a woman in labor.

All are stubborn rebels
spreading slander.
They are bronze and iron;
all of them are corrupt.

The bellows blow,
blasting the lead with fire.
The refining is completely in vain;
the evil ones are not separated out.

They are called rejected silver,
for the Lord has rejected them.

“This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your deeds, and I will allow you to live in this place.

Instead, if you really change your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another,

if you no longer oppress the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves,

I will allow you to live in this place, the land I gave to your ancestors long ago and forever.

Then do you come and stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’?

Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it.”

This is the Lord’s declaration.

“But return to My place that was at Shiloh, where I made My name dwell at first. See what I did to it because of the evil of My people Israel.

what I did to Shiloh I will do to the house that is called by My name—the house in which you trust—the place that I gave you and your ancestors.

I will drive you from My presence, just as I drove out all of your brothers, all the descendants of Ephraim.

“As for you, do not pray for these people. Do not offer a cry or a prayer on their behalf, and do not beg Me, for I will not listen to you.

But are they really provoking Me?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Isn’t it they themselves being provoked to disgrace?”

This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices, and eat the meat yourselves,

for when I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offering and sacrifice.

However, I did give them this command: Obey Me, and then I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must follow every way I command you so that it may go well with you.

Yet they didn’t listen or pay attention but followed their own advice and according to their own stubborn, evil heart. They went backward and not forward.

Since the day your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent all My servants the prophets to you time and time again.

However, they wouldn’t listen to Me or pay attention but became obstinate; they did more evil than their ancestors.

Cut off the hair of your sacred vow and throw it away. Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under His wrath.

“Therefore, take note! Days are coming”—the Lord’s declaration—“when this place will no longer be called Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. Topheth will become a cemetery, because there will be no other burial place.

“You are to say to them: This is what the Lord says:

Do people fall and not get up again?
If they turn away, do they not return?

Even the stork in the sky
knows her seasons.
The turtledove, swallow, and crane
are aware of their migration,
but My people do not know
the requirements of the Lord.