Jeremiah 5:1-15

Complete Jewish Bible

5 “Roam the streets of Yerushalayim
look around, observe and ask in its open spaces:
if you can find anyone (if there is anyone!)
who acts with justice and seeks the truth,
I will pardon her.
² And though they say, ‘As Adonai lives,’
the fact is that they are swearing falsely.”

³ Adonai, your eyes look for truth.
You struck them, but they weren’t affected;
you [nearly] destroyed them,
but they refused correction.
They made their faces harder than rock,
refusing to repent.

⁴ My reaction was, “These must be the poor,
the foolish, not knowing the way of Adonai
or the rulings of their God.
⁵ I will go to the prominent men,
and I will speak to them;
for they know the way of Adonai
and the rulings of their God.”
But these had completely broken the yoke
and torn the harness off.
⁶ This is why a forest lion kills them,
why a desert wolf can plunder them,
why a leopard guards their cities —
all who leave are torn to pieces —
because their crimes are many,
their backslidings keep increasing.

⁷ “Why should I forgive you?
Your people have abandoned me
and sworn by non-gods.
When I fed them to the full,
they committed adultery,
thronging to the brothels.
⁸ They have become like well-fed horses,
lusty stallions, each one neighing
after his neighbor’s wife.
⁹ Should I not punish for this?” asks Adonai.
“Should I not be avenged on a nation like this?”

¹⁰ Go through her rows [of vines], and destroy them
(but don’t destroy them completely):
strip away her branches,
they do not belong to Adonai.
¹¹ “For the house of Isra’el
and the house of Y’hudah
have thoroughly betrayed me,” says Adonai.

¹² They have denied Adonai,
they have said, “He won’t do anything,
calamity will not strike us,
we will see neither sword nor famine.
¹³ The prophets are merely wind,
they do not have the word;
the things that they are predicting
will happen only to them.”

“Because you people speak this way,
I will make my words fire in your mouth, [Yirmeyahu,]
and this people wood;
so that it will devour them.
¹⁵ I will bring on you, house of Isra’el,
a distant nation,” says Adonai,
“an enduring nation, an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know —
you will not understand what they are saying.