Jeremiah 3:19-4:4

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

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.”

4 “If you return, O Israel,
                says the Lord,
    to me you should return.
If you remove your abominations from my presence,
    and do not waver,
²and if you swear, ‘As the Lord lives,’
    in truth, in justice, and in uprightness,
then nations shall bless themselves in him,
    and in him shall they glory.”

³For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

“Break up your fallow ground,
    and sow not among thorns.
⁴Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
    remove the foreskin of your hearts,
    O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;
lest my wrath go forth like fire,
    and burn with none to quench it,
    because of the evil of your doings.”

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1965, 1966 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.