Jeremiah 17-20
Amplified Bible, Classic Edition
17 The sin of Judah is written with a pen or stylus of iron and with the point of a diamond; it is engraved on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars,
2 While their children [earnestly] remember their [heathen] altars and their Asherim [wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah] beside the green trees upon the high hills.
3 O [Jerusalem] My mountain in the field, I will give your wealth and all your treasures to the spoil and your high places for sin [as the price of your sin] throughout all your territory.
4 And you, through your own fault, will loosen your hand and discontinue from your heritage which I gave you; and I will cause you to serve your enemies in a land which you do not know, for you have kindled a fire in My anger which will burn throughout the ages.
5 Thus says the Lord: Cursed [with great evil] is the strong man who trusts in and relies on frail man, making weak [human] flesh his arm, and whose mind and heart turn aside from the Lord.
6 For he shall be like a shrub or a person naked and destitute in the desert; and he shall not see any good come, but shall dwell in the parched places in the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
7 [Most] blessed is the man who believes in, trusts in, and relies on the Lord, and whose hope and confidence the Lord is.
8 For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river; and it shall not see and fear when heat comes; but its leaf shall be green. It shall not be anxious and full of care in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]?(A)
10 I the Lord search the mind, I try the heart, even to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.
11 Like the partridge that gathers a brood which she did not hatch and sits on eggs which she has not laid, so is he who gets riches by unjust means and not by right. He will leave them, or they will leave him, in the midst of his days, and at his end he will be a fool.
12 A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary (the temple).
13 O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all who forsake You shall be put to shame. They who depart from You and me [Your prophet] shall [disappear like] writing upon the ground, because they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters.
14 Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for You are my praise.
15 Behold, they say to me, Where is the word of the Lord [predicting the disaster that you said would befall us]? Let it come now!
16 But as for me, I have not sought to escape from being a shepherd after You, nor have I desired the woeful day [of judgment]; You know that. Whatever I said was spoken in Your presence and was from You.
17 Be not a terror to me; You are my refuge and my hope in the day of evil.
18 Let those be put to shame who persecute me, but let me not be put to shame; let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed. Bring on them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.
19 Thus said the Lord to me: Go and stand in the gate of the sons of the people, through which the kings of Judah enter and through which they go out, and also [stand] in all the gates of Jerusalem.
20 Say to them, Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who enter through these gates.
21 Thus says the Lord: Take heed to yourselves and for the sake of your lives bear no burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in through the gates of Jerusalem.
22 And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy (set apart to the worship of God), as I commanded your fathers.
23 Yet they would not listen and obey or incline their ears; but they stiffened their necks, that they might not hear and might not receive instruction.
24 But if you diligently listen to and obey Me, says the Lord, and bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy (set apart to the worship of God), to do no work on it,
25 Then there will enter through the gates of this city kings and princes who will sit upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses—the kings and their princes, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city will be inhabited and last throughout the ages.
26 And people shall come from the cities of Judah and the places round about Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the lowland, from the hill country, and from the South (the Negeb), bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, cereal offerings and frankincense, and bringing sacrifices of thanksgiving to the house of the Lord.
27 But if you will not listen to Me to keep the Sabbath day holy (set apart to the worship of God), and not to bear a burden and enter in at the gates of Jerusalem [with one] on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in her gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.
18 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord:
2 Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.
3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he was working at the wheel.
4 And the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he made it over, reworking it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to make it.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me:
6 O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does? says the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.
7 At one time I will suddenly speak concerning a nation or kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it;
8 And if [the people of] that nation concerning which I have spoken turn from their evil, I will relent and reverse My decision concerning the evil that I thought to do to them.
9 At another time I will suddenly speak concerning a nation or kingdom, that I will build up and plant it;
10 And if they do evil in My sight, obeying not My voice, then I will regret and reverse My decision concerning the good with which I said I would benefit them.
11 Now therefore say to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Return now each one from his evil way; reform your [accustomed] ways and make your [individual] actions good and right.
12 But they will say, That is in vain! For we will walk after our own devices, and we will each do as the stubbornness of his own evil heart dictates.
13 Therefore thus says the Lord: Ask now among the nations: Who has heard such things? Virgin Israel has done a very vile and horrible thing.
14 Will the snow of Mount Lebanon fail and vanish from its rocks [which tower above the land of Israel]? Will the cold, rushing waters of strange lands [that dash down from afar] be dried up?
15 Yet My people have forgotten Me; they burn incense to false gods, they have been caused to stumble in their ways and in the ancient roads, to walk in bypaths, in a way not graded and built up [not on a highway],
16 Making their land a desolation and a horror, a thing to be hissed at perpetually; everyone who passes by shall be astounded and horrified and shake his head.
17 I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their calamity [says the Lord].
18 Then [my enemies] said, Come and let us devise schemes against Jeremiah; for the law [of Moses] shall not perish from the priest [as this false prophet Jeremiah predicts], nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us smite him with the tongue [making a charge against him to the king], and let us not pay any attention to his words.
19 Give heed to me, Lord; listen to [what] my adversaries [are plotting to do to me—and intercede].
20 Shall evil be recompensed for good? Yet they have dug a pit for my life. [Earnestly] remember that I stood before You to speak good for them, to turn away Your anger from them.
21 Therefore deliver up their children to the famine; give them over to the power of the sword. And let their wives become childless and widows; let their men meet death by pestilence, their young men be slain by the sword in battle.
22 Let a cry be heard from their houses when You suddenly bring a troop upon them, for they have dug a pit to take me and have hidden snares for my feet.
23 Yet, Lord, You know all their plotting against me to slay me. Forgive not their iniquity, nor blot out their sin from Your sight. But let them be overthrown before You; deal with them in the time of Your anger.
19 Thus says the Lord: Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and take some of the old people and some of the elderly priests
2 And go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], which is by the entrance of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I shall tell you,
3 And say, Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am going to bring such evil upon this place that the ears of whoever hears of it will tingle.
4 Because the people have forsaken Me and have estranged and profaned this place [Jerusalem] by burning incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents
5 And have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not nor spoke of it, nor did it come into My mind and heart—
6 Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], but the Valley of Slaughter.(B)
7 And I will pour out and make void the counsel and the plans of [the men of] Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives, and their dead bodies I will give to be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.
8 And I will make this city an astonishment and a horror and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss [in scorn] because of all its plagues and disasters.
9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they shall eat each one the flesh of his neighbor and friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their lives distress them.
10 Then you shall break the bottle in the sight of the men who accompany you,
11 And say to them, Thus said the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it cannot be mended. Men will bury in Topheth because there will be no other place for burial and until there is no more room to bury.
12 Thus will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants; and I will even make this city like Topheth.
13 And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, shall be like the place of Topheth—even all the houses upon whose roofs incense has been burned to all the host of the heavens and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods.(C)
14 Then came Jeremiah from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the Lord’s house and said to all the people,
15 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear My words.
20 Now Pashhur son of Immer, the priest, who was [also] chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things.
2 Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were at the upper Benjamin Gate by the house of the Lord.(D)
3 And the next day Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, The Lord does not call your name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib [terror on every side].
4 For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; they will fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he will carry them captive to Babylon and will slay them with the sword.
5 Moreover, I will deliver all the riches of this city—all the results of its labors, all its precious things, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah—into the hand of their enemies, who will make them a prey and plunder them and seize them and carry them to Babylon.
6 And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity; you shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied falsely.
7 [But Jeremiah said] O Lord, You have persuaded and deceived me, and I was persuaded and deceived; You are stronger than I am and You have prevailed. I am a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.
8 For whenever I speak, I must cry out and complain; I shout, Violence and destruction! For the word of the Lord has become to me a reproach and a derision and has brought me insult all day long.
9 If I say, I will not make mention of [the Lord] or speak any more in His name, in my mind and heart it is as if there were a burning fire shut up in my bones. And I am weary of enduring and holding it in; I cannot [contain it any longer].
10 For I have heard many whispering and defaming, [There is] terror on every side! Denounce him! Let us denounce him! Say all my familiar friends, they who watch for my fall, Perhaps he will be persuaded and deceived; then we will prevail against him, and we will get our revenge on him.
11 But the Lord is with me as a mighty and terrible One; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not overcome [me]. They will be utterly put to shame, for they will not deal wisely or prosper [in their schemes]; their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten.
12 But, O Lord of hosts, You Who try the righteous, Who see the heart and the mind, let me see Your vengeance on them, for to You have I revealed and committed my cause.
13 Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For He has delivered the life of the poor and needy from the hands of evildoers.
14 Cursed be the day on which I was born! Let not the day on which my mother bore me be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought the tidings to my father, saying, A son is born to you!—making him very glad.
16 And let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew, and did not relent. Let him hear the [war] cry in the morning and the shouting of alarm at noon,
17 Because he did not slay me in the womb, so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb always great.
18 Why did I come out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed in shame?
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation
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