Jeremiah 3:14-25

Revised Standard Version

¹⁴Return, O faithless children,
                says the Lord;
    for I am your master;
I will take you, one from a city and two from a family,
    and I will bring you to Zion.

¹⁵“‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. ¹⁶And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, says the Lord, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed; it shall not be made again. ¹⁷At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart. ¹⁸In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage.

¹⁹“‘I thought
    how I would set you among my sons,
and give you a pleasant land,
    a heritage most beauteous of all nations.
And I thought you would call me, My Father,
    and would not turn from following me.
²⁰Surely, as a faithless wife leaves her husband,
    so have you been faithless to me, O house of Israel,
                says the Lord.’”

²¹A voice on the bare heights is heard,
    the weeping and pleading of Israel’s sons
because they have perverted their way,
    they have forgotten the Lord their God.
²²“Return, O faithless sons,
    I will heal your faithlessness.”
“Behold, we come to thee;
    for thou art the Lord our God.
²³Truly the hills are a delusion,
    the orgies on the mountains.
Truly in the Lord our God
    is the salvation of Israel.

²⁴“But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. ²⁵Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

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Revised Standard Version (RSV)

Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.