Jeremiah 8:18-9:2
Expanded Bible
Jeremiah’s Sadness
18 God, ·you are my comfort when I am very sad [L my cheerfulness is gone; grief has come on me]
and ·when I am afraid [L my heart is sick].
19 Listen to the ·sound [L cry of distress] of ·my people [L the daughter of my people].
They cry from a faraway land:
“Isn’t the Lord still in ·Jerusalem [L Zion; C the location of the Temple]?
Isn’t ·Jerusalem’s [L its] king still there?”
But God says, “Why did the people make me angry ·by worshiping idols [L with their images],
useless foreign idols?”
20 And the people say, “Harvest time is over;
summer has ended,
and we have not been ·saved [rescued].”
21 Because my people are ·crushed [broken; fractured], I am ·crushed [broken; fractured].
I ·cry loudly [mourn; lament; wail] and ·am afraid for them [L horror has seized me].
22 Isn’t there balm [C the resin of the storax tree used as medicine] in the land of Gilead [C southern section of the Transjordan region]?
Isn’t there a doctor there?
So why ·aren’t the hurts of my people healed [L is there no new skin on the wound of the daughter of my people]?
9 ·I wish [Oh that] my head were like a spring of water
and my eyes like a fountain of tears!
Then I could cry day and night
for ·my people who have been killed [L the corpses of the daughter of my people].
2 ·I wish [Oh that] I had a place in the ·desert [wilderness]—
a house where travelers spend the night—
so I could ·leave [abandon; forsake] my people.
I could go away from them,
because they are all adulterers [C unfaithful to God; 2:20, 23–24; 3:1–5; Hos. 7:4];
·they are all turning against him [L a band of traitors].
The Expanded Bible, Copyright © 2011 Thomas Nelson Inc. All rights reserved.
