“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!

How she sits alone,
the city once crowded with people!
She who was great among the nations
has become like a widow.
The princess among the provinces
has been put to forced labor.

כ KafAll her people groan
while they search for bread.
They have traded their precious belongings for food
in order to stay alive.
Lord, look and see
how I have become despised.

ר ReshLord, see how I am in distress.
I am churning within;
my heart is broken,
for I have been very rebellious.
Outside, the sword takes the children;
inside, there is death.

How the Lord has overshadowed
Daughter Zion with His anger!
He has thrown down Israel’s glory
from heaven to earth.
He has abandoned His footstool
in the day of His anger.

How the gold has become tarnished,
the fine gold become dull!
The stones of the temple lie scattered
at the corner of every street.

ב BetZion’s precious people—
once worth their weight in pure gold—
how they are regarded as clay jars,
the work of a potter’s hands!

The Lord said, “This is how the Israelites will eat their bread—ceremonially unclean—among the nations where I will banish them.”

Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves because of the evil things they did, their detestable practices of every kind.

“For this is what the Lord God says: How much worse will it be when I send My four devastating judgments against Jerusalem—sword, famine, dangerous animals, and plague—in order to wipe out both man and animal from it!

“Son of man, how does the wood of the vine, that branch among the trees of the forest, compare to any other wood?

Even when it was whole it could not be made into a useful object. How much less can it ever be made into anything useful when the fire has devoured it and it is charred!

“How your heart was inflamed with lust”—the declaration of the Lord God—“when you did all these things, the acts of a brazen prostitute,

“In addition, they sent for men who came from far away when a messenger was dispatched to them. And look how they came! You bathed, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with jewelry for them.

Yet they had sex with her as one does with a prostitute. This is how they had sex with Oholah and Oholibah, those obscene women.

Then they will lament for you and say of you:

How you have perished, city of renown,
you who were populated from the seas!
She who was powerful on the sea,
she and all of her inhabitants
inflicted their terror.

“Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel: You have said this, ‘Our transgressions and our sins are heavy on us, and we are wasting away because of them! How then can we survive?’

Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look how they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’

How great are His miracles,
and how mighty His wonders!
His kingdom is an eternal kingdom,
and His dominion is from generation to generation.

Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the speaker, “How long will the events of this vision last—the daily sacrifice, the rebellion that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and of the host to be trampled?”

How can someone like me, your servant, speak with someone like you, my lord? Now I have no strength, and there is no breath in me.”

One of them said to the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, “How long until the end of these extraordinary things?”

Your calf-idol is rejected, Samaria.
My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
I have had a change of heart;
My compassion is stirred!

But Ephraim says:
“How rich I have become;
I made it all myself.
In all my earnings,
no one can find any crime in me
that I can be punished for!”

How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle wander in confusion
since they have no pasture.
Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.

When the locusts finished eating the vegetation of the land, I said, “Lord God, please forgive! How will Jacob survive since he is so small?”

Then I said, “Lord God, please stop! How will Jacob survive since he is so small?”

If thieves came to you,
if marauders by night—
how ravaged you would be!—
wouldn’t they steal only what they wanted?
If grape pickers came to you,
wouldn’t they leave some grapes?

How Esau will be pillaged,
his hidden treasures searched out!

Because of this I will lament and wail;
I will walk barefoot and naked.
I will howl like the jackals
and mourn like ostriches.

In that day one will take up a taunt against you,
and lament mournfully, saying,
“We are totally ruined!
He measures out the allotted land of my people.
How He removes it from me!
He allots our fields to traitors.”

My people, what have I done to you,
or how have I wearied you?
Testify against Me!

How sad for me!
For I am like one who—
when the summer fruit has been gathered
after the gleaning of the grape harvest—
finds no grape cluster to eat,
no early fig, which I crave.

How long, Lord, must I call for help
and You do not listen
or cry out to You about violence
and You do not save?

Won’t all of these take up a taunt against him,
with mockery and riddles about him?
They will say:

Woe to him who amasses what is not his—
how much longer?—
and loads himself with goods taken in pledge.

Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Doesn’t it seem like nothing to you?

Then the Angel of the Lord responded, “How long, Lord of Hosts, will You withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah that You have been angry with these 70 years?”

How lovely and beautiful they will be!
Grain will make the young men flourish,
and new wine, the young women.

“I have loved you,” says the Lord.

But you ask: “How have You loved us?”

“Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob,

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of Me? says Yahweh of Hosts to you priests, who despise My name.”

Yet you ask: “How have we despised Your name?”

“By presenting defiled food on My altar.”

You ask: “How have we defiled You?”

When you say: “The Lord’s table is contemptible.”

You have wearied the Lord with your words.

Yet you ask, “How have we wearied Him?”

When you say, “Everyone who does what is evil is good in the Lord’s sight, and He is pleased with them,” or “Where is the God of justice?”

“Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from My statutes; you have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Hosts.

But you ask: “How can we return?”

“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me!”

You ask: “How do we rob You?”

“By not making the payments of the tenth and the contributions.

Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled on by men.

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness—how deep is that darkness!

And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow: they don’t labor or spin thread.

If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t He do much more for you—you of little faith?

Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye?

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

But when they hand you over, don’t worry about how or what you should speak. For you will be given what to say at that hour,

It is enough for a disciple to become like his teacher and a slave like his master. If they called the head of the house ‘Beelzebul,’ how much more the members of his household!

how he entered the house of God, and they ate the sacred bread, which is not lawful for him or for those with him to eat, but only for the priests?

But the Pharisees went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.

If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

How can someone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.

Brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.

Then off it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. As a result, that man’s last condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will also be with this evil generation.”

He went to His hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “How did this wisdom and these miracles come to Him?

“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked them.

“Seven,” they said, “and a few small fish.”

And in the morning, ‘Today will be stormy because the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to read the appearance of the sky, but you can’t read the signs of the times.

Don’t you understand yet? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the 5,000 and how many baskets you collected?

Or the seven loaves for the 4,000 and how many large baskets you collected?

Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and rebellious generation! How long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.”

Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how many times could my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

When the disciples saw it, they were amazed and said, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”

So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ The man was speechless.

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to trap Him by what He said.

He asked them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls Him ‘Lord’:

“If David calls Him ‘Lord,’ how then can the Messiah be his Son?”

“Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell?

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! She who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, yet you were not willing!