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Chapter 2

Infidelity of Israel.[a] The word of the Lord came to me: Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear!

I remember the devotion[b] of your youth,
    how you loved me as a bride,
Following me in the wilderness,
    in a land unsown.(A)
Israel was dedicated to the Lord,
    the first fruits[c] of his harvest;
All who ate of it were held guilty,
    evil befell them—oracle of the Lord.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 2:1–3:5 These chapters may contain some of Jeremiah’s early preaching. He portrays Israel as the wife of the Lord, faithful only in the beginning, when she walked behind him (2:2–3, 5; 3:1). Consistent with the marriage metaphor, he describes her present unfaithfulness as adultery (2:20; 3:2–3); now she walks behind the Baals.
  2. 2:2 Devotion: Heb. hesed; Israel’s gratitude, fidelity, and love for God.
  3. 2:3 First fruits: the first yield of a harvest offered as a sign of dependence on and gratitude toward the Lord of the land, thus divine property. Israel, then, is a gift made to God, set apart for his use; cf. Ex 23:19.

I brought you into the garden land
    to eat its fine fruits,
But you entered and defiled my land,
    you turned my heritage into an abomination.(A)
The priests did not ask,
    “Where is the Lord?”
The experts in the law[a] did not know me:
    the shepherds rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
    and went after useless idols.(B)

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Footnotes

  1. 2:8 Experts in the law: the priests. The shepherds: the kings and nobles.

12 Be horrified at this, heavens;
    shudder, be appalled—oracle of the Lord.
13 Two evils my people have done:
    they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.(A)

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