Destruction from the North

Mend Your Ways!

7 The word that came to Jeremiah from Adonai, saying: ² Stand in the gate of Adonai’s house and proclaim there this word and say: “Hear the word of Adonai, all you of Judah that come through these gates to worship Adonai. ³ Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Israel; mend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you live in this place. ⁴ Do not trust in deceptive words and say ‘The Temple of Adonai, the Temple of Adonai, the Temple of Adonai!’

⁵ “No, if you truly mend your ways and your deeds—if you are doing justice between a man and his neighbor, ⁶ not oppressing the sojourner, orphan and widow nor shedding innocent blood in this place, nor going after other gods to your own ruin— ⁷ then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. ⁸ Look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are empty. ⁹ Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and perjury, and offer incense to Baal and walk after other gods whom you have not known— ¹⁰ and then come and stand before Me in this house that bears My Name, saying, ‘We are saved!’—so that you may keep doing all these abominations? ¹¹ Has this House, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?^[b] Look, even I have seen it!” It is a declaration of Adonai.

¹² “Indeed, go now to My place that was in Shiloh, where I first made My Name dwell. Now see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel. ¹³ While you were doing all these things,” declares Adonai, “I spoke to you early and often, but you did not listen, and I called you but you did not answer. ¹⁴ Therefore I will do to the House that bears My Name—the one in which you trust, the one that I gave to you and to your fathers—as I have done to Shiloh. ¹⁵ And I will cast you out of My sight, just as I cast out all your brothers, all the offspring of Ephraim.

¹⁶ “As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not offer any supplication or petition for them, nor entreat Me, because I will not hear you. ¹⁷ Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire and the women knead the dough to make sacrificial cakes to the queen of heaven. Moreover, they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to provoke Me to anger. ¹⁹ But am I the One they are provoking?” declares Adonai. “Are they not vexing themselves to their own shame?”

²⁰ Therefore thus says Adonai Elohim: “My anger and My wrath is about to be poured out on this place—on man and beast, and on the trees of the field and the fruit of the land—and it will burn and not be quenched.”

²¹ Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat! ²² For on the day that I brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt I did not speak to them nor did I command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, ²³ but I explicitly commanded them: ‘Obey My voice and I will be your God to you and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways that I command you that it may go well with you.’ ²⁴ But they did not listen or pay attention. Instead they followed their own counsel, in the stubbornness of their evil heart. They have gone backward and not forward, ²⁵ from the day your fathers left the land of Egypt until today. Although I sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily and persistently, ²⁶ they did not listen to Me or pay attention. Rather, they stiffened their neck, doing more evil than their fathers.

²⁷ “When you tell them all these things, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. ²⁸ So you will say to them, ‘This nation has not obeyed the voice of Adonai their God or received correction. Truth has perished and is cut off from their mouth. ²⁹ Cut off your hair and throw it away and take up a lamentation on the barren hills. For Adonai has spurned and cast off the generation of His wrath.”

Valley of Slaughter

³⁰ “The children of Judah have done what is evil in My sight”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“They have set their detestable things in the House that bears My Name to defile it. ³¹ They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it even enter My mind. ³² Therefore, the days are soon coming,” declares Adonai, “when it will no longer be called Topheth, nor the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. For they will bury in Topheth until there is no room. ³³ The carcasses of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. ³⁴ Then I will bring an end, from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, to the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land will be desolate.”

8 “At that time”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of his princes, the bones of the kohanim and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem will be brought out of their graves. ² They will spread them out to the sun, the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, and after which they have walked and sought, and which they have worshipped. They will not be gathered or buried, but will be like dung on the face of the ground. ³ So death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family that remains in all the places to which I have driven them.” It is a declaration of Adonai-Tzva’ot.

Each Turns His Own Way

⁴ Moreover you will say to them, thus says Adonai:

⁸ See that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men and the basic principles of the world rather than Messiah. ⁹ For all the fullness of Deity lives bodily in Him, ¹⁰ and in Him you have been filled to fullness. He is the head over every ruler and authority.

¹¹ In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision done not by hand, in the stripping away of the body of the flesh through the circumcision of Messiah. ¹² You were buried along with Him in immersion, through which you also were raised with Him by trusting in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. ¹³ When you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with Him when He pardoned us all our transgressions. ¹⁴ He wiped out the handwritten record of debts with the decrees against us, which was hostile to us. He took it away by nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ After disarming the principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross.^[a]

The Danger of False Wisdom

¹⁶ Therefore, do not let anyone pass judgment on you in matters of food or drink, or in respect to a festival or new moon or Shabbat. ^{[b] 17} These are a foreshadowing of things to come, but the reality is Messiah. ^{[c] 18} Let no one disqualify you by insisting on false humility and worship of angels—going into detail about what he has seen, puffed up without cause by his fleshly mind. ¹⁹ He is not holding fast to the Head. It is from Him that the whole body, nourished and held together by its joints and tendons, grows with a godly increase. ²⁰ If you died with Messiah to the basic principles of the world, why—as though living in the world—do you subject yourselves to their rules? ²¹ “Don’t handle! Don’t taste! Don’t touch!” ²² These all lead to decay with use, based as they are on man-made commands and teachings. ^{[d] 23} Indeed, these are matters that have an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and humility and self-denial of the body—yet none are of any value for stopping indulgence of the flesh.

Israel from Moses to David

Psalm 78