Jeremiah 8:4-9:5
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
The Blind Perversity of the Whole Nation
4 You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:
When people fall, do they not get up again?
If they go astray, do they not turn back?(A)
5 Why then has this people[a] turned away
in perpetual faithlessness?
They have held fast to deceit;
they have refused to return.(B)
6 I have given heed and listened,
but they do not speak honestly;
no one repents of wickedness,
saying, “What have I done!”
All of them turn to their own course
like a horse plunging headlong into battle.(C)
7 Even the stork in the heavens
knows its times,
and the turtledove, swallow, and crane[b]
observe the time of their coming,
but my people do not know
the ordinance of the Lord.(D)
8 How can you say, “We are wise,
and the law of the Lord is with us,”
when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes
has made it into a lie?(E)
9 The wise shall be put to shame;
they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
what wisdom is in them?(F)
10 Therefore I will give their wives to others
and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.(G)
11 They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly,
saying, “Peace, peace,”
when there is no peace.(H)
12 They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,
yet they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord.(I)
13 I will surely gather them,[c] says the Lord;
there are no grapes on the vine
nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
and what I gave them has passed away from them.[d](J)
14 Why do we sit still?
Gather together; let us go into the fortified cities
and perish there,
for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish
and has given us poisoned water to drink
because we have sinned against the Lord.(K)
15 We look for peace but find no good,
for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.(L)
16 The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;
at the sound of the neighing of their stallions
the whole land quakes.
They come and devour the land and all that fills it,
the city and those who live in it.(M)
17 See, I am letting snakes loose among you,
adders that cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you,
says the Lord.(N)
The Prophet Mourns for the People
18 My joy is gone; grief is upon me;
my heart is sick.
19 Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people
from far and wide in the land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?”
(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their foreign idols?”)(O)
20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
21 For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,
I mourn, and horror has seized me.(P)
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people
not been restored?(Q)
9 [e]O that my head were a spring of water
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people!(R)
2 [f]O that I had in the desert
a traveler’s lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
a band of traitors.(S)
3 They bend their tongues like bows;
they have grown strong in the land for falsehood and not for truth,
for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they do not know me, says the Lord.(T)
4 Beware of your neighbors,
and put no trust in any of your kin,
for all your kin are supplanters,
and every neighbor goes around like a slanderer.(U)
5 They all deceive their neighbors,
and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to speak lies;
they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.[g](V)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.