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.

However, as a woman may betray her lover,
so you have betrayed Me, house of Israel.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

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!

My dear people, dress yourselves in sackcloth
and roll in the dust.
Mourn as you would for an only son,
a bitter lament,
for suddenly the destroyer will come on us.

“Go down at once to the potter’s house; there I will reveal My words to you.”

So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, working away at the wheel.

But the jar that he was making from the clay became flawed in the potter’s hand, so he made it into another jar, as it seemed right for him to do.

“House of Israel, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay?”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, house of Israel.

This is what the Lord says: “Go, buy a potter’s clay jar. Take some of the elders of the people and some of the leading priests

and you are to proclaim to them: This is what the Lord of Hosts says: I will shatter these people and this city, like one shatters a potter’s jar that can never again be mended. They will bury the dead in Topheth because there is no other place for burials.

This is what the Lord says:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
a lament with bitter weeping—
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted for her children
because they are no more.