“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?

For My people have committed a double evil:
They have abandoned Me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.

I observed that it was because unfaithful Israel had committed adultery that I had sent her away and had given her a certificate of divorce. Nevertheless, her treacherous sister Judah was not afraid but also went and prostituted herself.

At that time Jerusalem will be called, Yahweh’s Throne, and all the nations will be gathered to it, to the name of Yahweh in Jerusalem. They will cease to follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts.

“On that day”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“the king and the officials will lose their courage. The priests will tremble in fear, and the prophets will be scared speechless.”

“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;

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

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 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.

Do you not fear Me?
This is the Lord’s declaration.
Do you not tremble before Me,
the One who set the sand as the boundary of the sea,
an enduring barrier that it cannot cross?
The waves surge, but they cannot prevail.
They roar but cannot pass over it.

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.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

But look, you keep trusting in deceitful words that cannot help.

“Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known?

“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.

The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke Me to anger.

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.

You must therefore declare to them: This is the nation that would not listen to the voice of the Lord their God and would not accept discipline. Truth has perished—it has disappeared from their mouths.

“For the Judeans have done what is evil in My sight.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “They have set up their detestable things in the house that is called by My name and defiled it.

“At that time”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of her officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the residents of Jerusalem will be brought out of their graves.

Indeed, I am about to send snakes among you,
poisonous vipers that cannot be charmed.
They will bite you.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

I will raise weeping and a lament
over the mountains,
a dirge over the wilderness grazing land,
for they have been so scorched
that no one passes through.
The sound of cattle is no longer heard.
From the birds of the sky to the animals,
everything has fled—they have gone away.

Who is the man wise enough to understand this? Who has the Lord spoken to, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a wilderness, so no one can pass through?

I will scatter them among the nations that they and their fathers have not known. I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”

Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us
so that our eyes may overflow with tears,
our eyelids soaked with weeping.

But the one who boasts should boast in this,
that he understands and knows Me—
that I am Yahweh, showing faithful love,
justice, and righteousness on the earth,
for I delight in these things.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Hear the word that the Lord has spoken to you, house of Israel.

You are to say this to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”

For this is what the Lord says:

Look, I am slinging out
the land’s residents at this time
and bringing them such distress
that they will feel it.

I know, Lord,
that a man’s way of life is not his own;
no one who walks determines his own steps.

Pour out Your wrath on the nations
that don’t recognize You
and on the families
that don’t call on Your name,
for they have consumed Jacob;
they have consumed him and finished him off
and made his homeland desolate.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

which I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace.’ I declared: ‘Obey Me, and do everything that I command you, and you will be My people, and I will be your God,’

“Therefore, this is what the Lord says: I am about to bring on them disaster that they cannot escape. They will cry out to Me, but I will not hear them.

for I was like a docile lamb led to slaughter.
I didn’t know that they had devised plots against me:
“Let’s destroy the tree with its fruit;
let’s cut him off from the land of the living
so that his name will no longer be remembered.”

Over all the barren heights in the wilderness
the destroyers have come,
for the Lord has a sword that devours
from one end of the earth to the other.
No one has peace.

This is what the Lord says: “Concerning all My evil neighbors who attack the inheritance that I bequeathed to My people, Israel, I am about to uproot them from their land, and I will uproot the house of Judah from them.

However, if they will not obey, then I will uproot and destroy that nation.”

This is the Lord’s declaration.

“Take the underwear that you bought and are wearing, and go at once to the Euphrates and hide it in a rocky crevice.”

A long time later the Lord said to me, “Go at once to the Euphrates and get the underwear that I commanded you to hide there.”

Just as underwear clings to one’s waist, so I fastened the whole house of Israel and of Judah to Me”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“so that they might be My people for My fame, praise, and glory, but they would not obey.

“Say this to them: This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Every jar should be filled with wine. Then they will respond to you, ‘Don’t we know that every jar should be filled with wine?’

Look up and see
those coming from the north.
Where is the flock entrusted to you,
the sheep that were your pride?

And when you ask yourself,
“Why have these things happened to me?”
It is because of your great guilt
that your skirts have been stripped off,
your body exposed.

I will pull your skirts up over your face
so that your shame might be seen.

The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought:

Woe is me, my mother,
that you gave birth to me,
a man who incites dispute and conflict
in all the land.
I did not lend or borrow,
yet everyone curses me.

Then I will make you serve your enemies
in a land you do not know,
for My anger will kindle a fire
that will burn against you.

You know, Lord;
remember me and take note of me.
Avenge me against my persecutors.
In Your patience, don’t take me away.
Know that I suffer disgrace for Your honor.

Why has my pain become unending,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
You truly have become like a mirage to me—
water that is not reliable.

“When you tell these people all these things, they will say to you, ‘Why has the Lord declared all this great disaster against us? What is our guilt? What is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’

So I will hurl you from this land into a land that you and your fathers are not familiar with. There you will worship other gods both day and night, for I will not grant you grace.

but rather, ‘As the Lord lives who brought the Israelites from the land of the north and from all the other lands where He had banished them.’ For I will return them to their land that I gave to their ancestors.

“Therefore, I am about to inform them,
and this time I will make them know
My power and My might;
then they will know that My name is Yahweh.”

You will, on your own, relinquish your inheritance
that I gave you.
I will make you serve your enemies
in a land you do not know,
for you have set My anger on fire;
it will burn forever.

He who makes a fortune unjustly
is like a partridge that hatches eggs it didn’t lay.
In the middle of his days
his riches will abandon him,
so in the end he will be a fool.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord:

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.

At one moment I might announce concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will uproot, tear down, and destroy it.

However, if that nation I have made an announcement about turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the disaster I had planned to do to it.

At another time I announce that I will build and plant a nation or a kingdom.

Yet My people have forgotten Me.
They burn incense to false idols
that make them stumble in their ways
on the ancient roads
and walk on new paths, not the highway.

Say: Hear the word of the Lord, kings of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on this place that everyone who hears about it will shudder

because they have abandoned Me and made this a foreign place. They have burned incense in it to other gods that they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah have never known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they will eat each other’s flesh in the siege and distress that their enemies, those who want to take their life, inflict on them.

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.

The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become impure like that place Topheth—all the houses on whose rooftops they have burned incense to the whole heavenly host and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”

“This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘I am about to bring on this city—and on all its dependent villages—all the disaster that I spoke against it, for they have become obstinate, not obeying My words.’”

As for you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, you will go into captivity. You will go to Babylon. There you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends that you prophesied falsely to.’”

For I have heard the gossip of many people,
“Terror is on every side!
Report him; let’s report him!”
Everyone I trusted watches for my fall.
“Perhaps he will be deceived
so that we might prevail against him
and take our vengeance on him.”

But the Lord is with me like a violent warrior.
Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
Since they have not succeeded, they will be utterly shamed,
an everlasting humiliation that will never be forgotten.

Let that man be like the cities
the Lord demolished without compassion.
Let him hear an outcry in the morning
and a war cry at noontime

because he didn’t kill me in the womb
so that my mother might have been my grave,
her womb eternally pregnant.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent Pashhur son of Malchijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to Jeremiah, asking,

“Ask the Lord on our behalf, since Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is making war against us. Perhaps the Lord will perform for us something like all His past wonderful works so that Nebuchadnezzar will withdraw from us.”

I will punish you according to what you have done—
this is the Lord’s declaration.
I will kindle a fire in its forest
that will consume everything around it.’”

But if you do not obey these words, then I swear by Myself”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“that this house will become a ruin.”

Through their dreams that they tell one another, they plan to cause My people to forget My name as their fathers forgot My name through Baal worship.

“Is not My word like fire”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“and like a hammer that pulverizes rock?

“As for the prophet, priest, or people who say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ I will punish that man and his household.

I will surely forget you and throw away from My presence both you and the city that I gave you and your fathers.

I will bring on you everlasting shame and humiliation that will never be forgotten.”

I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am Yahweh. They will be My people, and I will be their God because they will return to Me with all their heart.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah (which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon).

“‘But you would not obey Me’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘in order that you might provoke Me to anger by the work of your hands and bring disaster on yourselves.’

When the 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘the land of the Chaldeans, for their guilt, and I will make it a ruin forever.

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

all the kings of the north, both near and far from one another;
that is, all the kingdoms of the world which are on the face of the earth.
Finally, the king of Sheshach will drink after them.

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.

Those slain by the Lord on that day will be spread from one end of the earth to the other. They will not be mourned, gathered, or buried. They will be like manure on the surface of the ground.

“This is what the Lord says: Stand in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple and speak all the words I have commanded you to speak to all Judah’s cities that are coming to worship there. Do not hold back a word.

Perhaps they will listen and return—each from his evil way of life—so that I might relent concerning the disaster that I plan to do to them because of the evil of their deeds.

You are to say to them: This is what the Lord says: If you do not listen to Me by living according to My instruction that I set before you

Then Jeremiah said to all the officials and the people, “The Lord sent me to prophesy all the words that you have heard against this temple and city.

So now, correct your ways and deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God so that He might relent concerning the disaster that He warned about.

But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves, on this city, and on its residents, for it is certain the Lord has sent me to speak all these things directly to you.”

“As for the nation or kingdom that does not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and does not place its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish by sword, famine, and plague”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“until through him I have destroyed it.