Indeed, I am about to summon all the clans and kingdoms of the north.”

This is the Lord’s declaration.

They will come, and each king will set up his throne
at the entrance to Jerusalem’s gates.
They will attack all her surrounding walls
and all the other cities of Judah.

“I will pronounce My judgments against them for all the evil they did when they abandoned Me to burn incense to other gods and to worship the works of their own hands.

They will fight against you but never prevail over you, since I am with you to rescue you.”

This is the Lord’s declaration.

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?”

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

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.

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

a wild donkey at home in the wilderness.
She sniffs the wind in the heat of her desire.
Who can control her passion?
All who look for her will not become tired;
they will find her in her mating season.

Like the shame of a thief when he is caught,
so the house of Israel has been put to shame.
They, their kings, their officials,
their priests, and their prophets

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.

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

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.

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.”

A sound is heard on the barren heights,
the children of Israel weeping and begging for mercy,
for they have perverted their way;
they have forgotten the Lord their God.

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.

They have her surrounded
like those who guard a field,
because she has rebelled against Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

“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.

Every city flees
at the sound of the horseman and the archer.
They enter the thickets
and climb among the rocks.
Every city is abandoned;
no inhabitant is left.

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.

I will go to the powerful
and speak to them.
Surely they know the way of the Lord,
the justice of their God.
However, these also had broken the yoke
and torn off the chains.

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.

Go up among her vineyard terraces and destroy them,
but do not finish them off.
Prune away her shoots,
for they do not belong to the Lord.

They, the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
have dealt very treacherously with Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

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

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.

Hear this,
you foolish and senseless people.
They have eyes, but they don’t see.
They have ears, but they don’t hear.

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.

But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts.
They have turned aside and have gone away.

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.’

for wicked men live among My people.
They watch like fowlers lying in wait.
They set a trap;
they catch men.

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

They have become fat and sleek.
They have also excelled in evil matters.
They have not taken up cases,
such as the case of the fatherless, so they might prosper,
and they have not defended the rights of the needy.

Shepherds and their flocks will come against her;
they will pitch their tents all around her.
Each will pasture his own portion.

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.

They have treated My people’s brokenness superficially,
claiming, “Peace, peace,”
when there is no peace.

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.

This is what the Lord says:

Stand by the roadways and look.
Ask about the ancient paths:
Which is the way to what is good?
Then take it
and find rest for yourselves.
But they protested, “We won’t!”

I appointed watchmen over you
and said: Listen for the sound of the ram’s horn.
But they protested, “We won’t listen!”

Listen, earth!
I am about to bring disaster on these people,
the fruit of their own plotting,
for they have paid no attention to My word.
They have rejected My instruction.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

“When you speak all these things to them, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you.

“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.

They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom in order to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, a thing I did not command; I never entertained the thought.

They will be exposed to the sun, the moon, and the whole heavenly host, which they have loved, served, followed, consulted, and worshiped. Their bones will not be collected and buried but will become like manure on the surface of the soil.

“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?

Why have these people turned away?
Why is Jerusalem always turning away?
They take hold of deceit;
they refuse to return.

I have paid careful attention.
They do not speak what is right.
No one regrets his evil,
asking, ‘What have I done?’
Everyone has stayed his course
like a horse rushing into battle.

The wise will be put to shame;
they will be dismayed and snared.
They have rejected the word of the Lord,
so what wisdom do they really have?

They have treated superficially the brokenness
of My dear people,
claiming, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.

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.

From Dan the snorting of horses is heard.
At the sound of the neighing of mighty steeds,
the whole land quakes.
They come to devour the land and everything in it,
the city and all its residents.

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.

Listen—the cry of my dear people
from a far away land,
“Is the Lord no longer in Zion,
her King not within her?”
Why have they provoked me to anger
with their carved images,
with their worthless foreign idols?

If only I had a traveler’s lodging place
in the wilderness,
I would abandon my people
and depart from them,
for they are all adulterers,
a solemn assembly of treacherous people.

They bent their tongues like their bows;
lies and not faithfulness prevail in the land,
for they proceed from one evil to another,
and they do not take Me into account.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Each one betrays his friend;
no one tells the truth.
They have taught their tongues to speak lies;
they wear themselves out doing wrong.

You live in a world of deception.
In their deception they refuse to know Me.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Their tongues are deadly arrows—
they speak deception.
With his mouth
a man speaks peaceably with his friend,
but inwardly he sets up an ambush.

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.

The Lord said, “It is because they abandoned My instruction that I set in front of them and did not obey My voice or walk according to it.

Instead, they followed the stubbornness of their hearts and followed after the Baals as their fathers taught them.”

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.”

Like scarecrows in a cucumber patch,
their idols cannot speak.
They must be carried because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them for they can do no harm—
and they cannot do any good.

They are both stupid and foolish,
instructed by worthless idols
made of wood!

They are worthless, a work to be mocked.
At the time of their punishment
they will be destroyed.

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.

For the shepherds are stupid:
they don’t seek the Lord.
Therefore they have not prospered,
and their whole flock is scattered.

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.

Yet they would not obey or pay attention; each one followed the stubbornness of his evil heart. So I brought on them all the curses of this covenant, because they had not done what I commanded them to do.”

They have returned to the sins of their ancestors who refused to obey My words and have followed other gods to worship them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah broke My covenant I made with their ancestors.

“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.

Then the cities of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods they have been burning incense to, but they certainly will not save them in their time of disaster.

“As for you, do not pray for these people. Do not raise up a cry or a prayer on their behalf, for I will not be listening when they call out to Me at the time of their disaster.

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.”

Therefore, here is what the Lord says concerning the people of Anathoth who want to take your life. They warn, “You must not prophesy in the name of Yahweh, or you will certainly die at our hand.”

They will have no remnant, for I will bring disaster on the people of Anathoth in the year of their punishment.”

You planted them, and they have taken root.
They have grown and produced fruit.
You are ever on their lips,
but far from their conscience.

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?

Even your brothers—your own father’s household—
even they were treacherous to you;
even they have cried out loudly after you.
Do not have confidence in them,
though they speak well of you.

Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard;
they have trampled My plot of land.
They have turned My desirable plot
into a desolate wasteland.

They have made it a desolation.
It mourns, desolate, before Me.
All the land is desolate,
but no one takes it to heart.

They have sown wheat but harvested thorns.
They have exhausted themselves but have no profit.
Be put to shame by your harvests
because of the Lord’s burning anger.

If they will diligently learn the ways of My people—to swear by My name, ‘As Yahweh lives,’ just as they taught My people to swear by Baal—they will be built up among My people.

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

This is the Lord’s declaration.