Jeremiah 8-9

Common English Bible

8 At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah and its officers, the bones of the priests and the prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be taken from their graves ²and exposed to the sun, the moon, and the whole heavenly forces, which they have loved and served and which they have followed, consulted, and worshipped. Their bones won’t be gathered for reburial but will become like refuse lying on the ground. ³The survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life, wherever I have scattered them, declares the Lord of heavenly forces.

Depth of Judah’s wrongdoing

⁴Say to them, The Lord proclaims:
When people fall down, don’t they get up?
    When they turn aside, don’t they turn back?
⁵Why then does this people, rebellious Jerusalem,
    persistently turn away from me?
They cling to deceit
    and refuse to return.
⁶I have listened carefully
    but haven’t heard a word of truth from them.
No one regrets their wrongdoing;
    no one says, “What have I done?”
Everyone turns to their own course,
    like a stallion dashing into the thick of battle.
⁷Even the stork in the sky knows the seasons,
    and the dove, swallow,^[a] and crane^[b]
        return in due time.
            But my people don’t know the Lord’s ways.
⁸How can you say, “We are wise;
    we possess the Lord’s Instruction,”
        when the lying pen of the scribes has surely distorted it?
⁹The wise will be shamed and shocked
    when they are caught.
Look, they have rejected the Lord’s word;
    what kind of wisdom is that?
¹⁰Therefore, I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to their captors.
From the least to the greatest,
    all are eager to profit.
From prophet to priest,
    all trade in falsehood.
¹¹They treat the wound of my people
    as if it were nothing:
“All is well, all is well,” they insist,
    when in fact nothing is well.
¹²They should be ashamed
        of their detestable practices,
    but they have no shame;
        they don’t even blush!
Therefore, they will fall among the fallen
    and stumble when disaster arrives,
        declares the Lord.
¹³I will put an end to them,^[c]
        declares the Lord;
    there are no grapes on the vine,
        no figs on the tree,
        only withered leaves.
They have squandered what I have given them!^[d]

A lament for God’s people

¹⁴Why are we sitting here?
    Come, let’s go to the fortified towns
        and meet our doom there.
The Lord our God has doomed us
    by giving us poisoned water to drink,
        because we have sinned against the Lord!
¹⁵We longed for relief,
        but received none;
    for a time of healing,
        but found only terror.
¹⁶The snorting of their horses can be heard as far as Dan;
    the neighing of their stallions makes the whole land tremble.
They come to devour the land and everything in it,
    towns and people alike.
¹⁷See, I’m sending serpents against you,
    vipers that you can’t charm,
    and they will bite you,
        declares the Lord.
¹⁸No healing,
    only grief;
        my heart is broken.^[e]
¹⁹Listen to the weeping of my people
        all across the land:
    “Isn’t the Lord in Zion?
        Is her king no longer there?”
Why then did they anger me with their images,
    with pointless foreign gods?
²⁰“The harvest is past,
    the summer has ended,
        yet we aren’t saved.”
²¹Because my people are crushed,
    I am crushed;
    darkness and despair overwhelm me.

What to do with God’s people

²²Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then have my people
not been restored to health?

9 ^[f] If only my head were a spring of water,
    and my eyes a fountain of tears,
I would weep day and night
    for the wounds of my people.
²^[g] If only I could flee for shelter in the desert,
    to leave my people
        and forget them—
    for they are all adulterers,
        a bunch of crooks.
³They bend their tongues like bows
        to spew out lies;
    they are renowned in the land,
        but not for truth.
They go from bad to worse.
    They don’t know me!
        declares the Lord.
⁴Be wary of your friends!
    Don’t trust your sibling!^[h]
    Every sibling is a cheater,
        and every friend traffics in slander.
⁵One cheats the other;
    no one tells the truth;
        they train themselves to lie;
        they wear themselves out by doing wrong.
⁶You live in a world of deceit,
    and in their deceit
    they refuse to know me,^[i]
        declares the Lord.
⁷Therefore, the Lord of heavenly forces proclaims:
I’m going to refine and test them,
    for what else can I do with my people?
⁸Their tongue is a lethal arrow;
    their words are deceitful.
They wish their neighbors well,
    but in their hearts plot their ruin.
⁹Shouldn’t I punish them for this?
        declares the Lord;
    shouldn’t I avenge such a nation?
¹⁰I will weep and wail for the mountains,
    and lament for the grazing lands in the wilderness.
They are dried up and deserted;
    no sound of the flocks is heard;
    no sign of birds or animals is seen;
        all have vanished.
¹¹I will reduce Jerusalem to ruins,
    a den for wild dogs.
I will make the towns of Judah a wasteland, without inhabitant.
¹²Who is wise enough to understand this?
    Who has been taught by the Lord
    and can therefore explain it?
Why has the land been reduced to rubble
    and laid waste like a desert,
        with no one passing through?

¹³The Lord says: It is because they have abandoned my Instruction that I gave them, and haven’t obeyed or followed it. ¹⁴Instead, they have followed their own willful hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them. ¹⁵Therefore, this is what the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, says: I’m going to feed this people bitter food and give them poison to drink. ¹⁶I will scatter them among nations about whom neither they nor their ancestors have ever heard. I will pursue them with the sword until all are gone.

¹⁷The Lord of heavenly forces proclaims:
Pay attention!
Summon the women who mourn,
        let them come;
    send for those best trained,
        let them come.
¹⁸Hurry!
Let them weep for us
    so that our eyes fill up with tears
        and water streams down.
¹⁹The sound of sobbing
    is heard from Zion:
    “We’re devastated!
    We’re so ashamed!
    We have to leave the land
        and abandon our homes!”
²⁰Women, hear the Lord’s word.
    Listen closely to the word
    from his mouth:
        teach your daughters to mourn;
        teach each other to grieve.
²¹Death has climbed through our windows;
    it has entered our fortresses
        to eliminate children from the streets,
        the youth from the squares.
²²Declare what the Lord says:
Dead bodies will lie
    like dung on the fields,
    like bundles of grain after the harvest,
        with no one to pick them up.
²³The Lord proclaims:
    the learned should not boast of their knowledge,
        nor warriors boast of their might,
        nor the rich boast of their wealth.
²⁴No, those who boast should boast in this:
    that they understand and know me.
I am the Lord who acts with kindness,
    justice, and righteousness in the world,
        and I delight in these things,
            declares the Lord.

²⁵The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will deal with everyone who is physically circumcised: ²⁶whether they are Egyptians or Judeans, Edomites or Ammonites, Moabites or the desert dwellers who cut the hair on their foreheads. All these nations are really uncircumcised; even the people of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.