13 Adonai said to me, “Go, buy yourself a linen loincloth, and wrap it around your body; but don’t soften it in water.” ² So I bought a loincloth, as Adonai had said, and put it on.

³ Then the word of Adonai came to me a second time: ⁴ “Take the loincloth you bought and are wearing, get up, go to Parah, and hide it there in a hole in the rock.” ⁵ So I went and hid it in Parah, as Adonai had ordered me.

⁶ A long time afterwards, Adonai said to me, “Get up, go to Parah, and recover the loincloth I ordered you to hide there.” ⁷ So I went to Parah and dug up the loincloth; but when I took it from the place where I had hidden it, I saw that it was ruined and useless for anything. ⁸ Then the word of Adonai came to me: ⁹ “Here is what Adonai says: ‘This is how I will ruin what makes Y’hudah so proud and Yerushalayim so very proud: ¹⁰ I will ruin this evil people, who refuse to hear my words and live according to their own stubborn inclinations, who go after other gods to serve and worship them. They will be like this loincloth, which is useless for anything. ¹¹ For just as a loincloth clings to a man’s body, I made the whole house of Isra’el and the whole house of Y’hudah cling to me,’ says Adonai, ‘so that they could be my people, building me a name and becoming for me a source of praise and honor. But they would not listen. ¹² So you are to tell them, “This is what Adonai the God of Isra’el says: ‘Every bottle is filled with wine.’” Then when they ask you, “Don’t we already know that every bottle is filled with wine?” ¹³ you are to answer them, “This is what Adonai says: ‘I am going to fill all the inhabitants of this land — including the kings sitting on the throne of David, the cohanim, the prophets and the inhabitants of Yerushalayim — with drunkenness. ¹⁴ Then I will smash them one against another, even fathers and sons together,’ says Adonai ‘I will show neither pity nor compassion, but I will destroy them relentlessly.’”’”

¹¹ Then Adonai said to me, “Don’t pray for this people or for their welfare. ¹² When they fast, I will not hear their cry; when they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Rather, I will destroy them with war, famine and disease.” ¹³ Then I said, “Adonai, God! The prophets are telling them, ‘You won’t see war, and you won’t have famine; but I will give you secure peace in this place.’” ¹⁴ Adonai replied, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I didn’t send them, order them or speak to them. They are prophesying false visions to you, worthless divinations, the delusions of their own minds. ¹⁵ Therefore,” Adonai says, “concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name, whom I did not send, yet they say, ‘There will be neither war nor famine in this land’ — it will be war and famine that will destroy those prophets. ¹⁶ And the people to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Yerushalayim because of the famine and war, with no one to bury them — them, or their wives, or their sons, or their daughters — because I will pour their own wickedness out upon them. ¹⁷ You are to give them this message:

15 Then Adonai said to me, “Even if Moshe and Sh’mu’el were standing in front of me, my heart would not turn toward this people! Drive them out of my sight, get them out of here! ² And when they ask you where they should go, tell them that this is what Adonai says:

¹¹ Adonai said, “I promise to release you for good, I promise to make your enemies appeal to you when calamity and trouble come.

¹² “Can iron break iron and bronze from the north? ¹³ I will give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder, and you will not be paid for them, because of all your sins throughout your territory; ¹⁴ and I will make you pass together with your enemies into a land you do not know. For my anger has become a blazing fire, and it will flare up against you.”

15 “I am the real vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² Every branch which is part of me but fails to bear fruit, he cuts off; and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it may bear more fruit. ³ Right now, because of the word which I have spoken to you, you are pruned. ⁴ Stay united with me, as I will with you — for just as the branch can’t put forth fruit by itself apart from the vine, so you can’t bear fruit apart from me.

⁵ “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who stay united with me, and I with them, are the ones who bear much fruit; because apart from me you can’t do a thing. ⁶ Unless a person remains united with me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up. Such branches are gathered and thrown into the fire, where they are burned up.

⁷ “If you remain united with me, and my words with you, then ask whatever you want, and it will happen for you. ⁸ This is how my Father is glorified — in your bearing much fruit; this is how you will prove to be my talmidim.

⁹ “Just as my Father has loved me, I too have loved you; so stay in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will stay in my love — just as I have kept my Father’s commands and stay in his love. ¹¹ I have said this to you so that my joy may be in you, and your joy be complete.

¹² “This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends, if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is about; but I have called you friends, because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, I chose you; and I have commissioned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that whatever you ask from the Father in my name he may give you. ¹⁷ This is what I command you: keep loving each other!

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you do not belong to the world — on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world — therefore the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. ²¹ But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don’t know the One who sent me.

²² “If I had not come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin; but now, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done in their presence works which no one else ever did, they would not be guilty of sin; but now, they have seen them and have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this has happened in order to fulfill the words in their Torah which read, ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’^[a]

²⁶ “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send you from the Father — the Spirit of Truth, who keeps going out from the Father — he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷ And you testify too, because you have been with me from the outset.