Jeremiah 6:26-30

The Message

²⁶“Dear Daughter Zion: Dress in black.
    Blacken your face with ashes.
Weep most bitterly,
    as for an only child.
The countdown has begun . . . 
    six, five, four, three . . . 
    The Terror is on us!”

* * *

^27-30God gave me this task:

“I have made you the examiner of my people,
    to examine and weigh their lives.
They’re a thickheaded, hard-nosed bunch,
    rotten to the core, the lot of them.
Refining fires are cranked up to white heat,
    but the ore stays a lump, unchanged.
It’s useless to keep trying any longer.
    Nothing can refine evil out of them.
Men will give up and call them ‘slag,’
    thrown on the slag heap by me, their God.”