Jeremiah Complains to God

God Replies to Jeremiah

¹⁴ Thus says the Lord concerning all my evil neighbors who touch the heritage which I have given my people Israel to inherit: “Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. ¹⁵ And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again each to his heritage and each to his land. ¹⁶ And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, ‘As the Lord lives,’ even as they taught my people to swear by Ba′al, then they shall be built up in the midst of my people. ¹⁷ But if any nation will not listen, then I will utterly pluck it up and destroy it, says the Lord.”

The Linen Loincloth

13 ^[b]Thus says the Lord to me, “Go and buy a linen waistcloth, and put it on your loins, and do not dip it in water.” ² So I bought a waistcloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. ³ And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, ⁴ “Take the waistcloth which you have bought, which is upon your loins, and arise, go to the Euphra′tes, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” ⁵ So I went, and hid it by the Euphra′tes, as the Lord commanded me. ⁶ And after many days the Lord said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphra′tes, and take from there the waistcloth which I commanded you to hide there.” ⁷ Then I went to the Euphra′tes, and dug, and I took the waistcloth from the place where I had hidden it. And behold, the waistcloth was spoiled; it was good for nothing.

⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to me: ⁹ “Thus says the Lord: Even so will I spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this waistcloth, which is good for nothing. ¹¹ For as the waistcloth clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

Symbol of the Wine-Jars

¹² “You shall speak to them this word: ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Every jar shall be filled with wine.”’ And they will say to you, ‘Do we not indeed know that every jar will be filled with wine?’ ¹³ Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land: the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And I will dash them one against another, fathers and sons together, says the Lord. I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.’”

Exile Threatened

41 Then he brought me to the nave, and measured the jambs; on each side six cubits was the breadth of the jambs.^{[a] 2} And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sidewalls of the entrance were five cubits on either side; and he measured the length of the nave forty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits. ³ Then he went into the inner room and measured the jambs of the entrance, two cubits; and the breadth of the entrance, six cubits; and the sidewalls^[b] of the entrance, seven cubits. ⁴ And he measured the length of the room, twenty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits, beyond the nave. And he said to me, “This is the most holy place.”

⁵ Then he measured the wall of the temple, six cubits thick; and the breadth of the side chambers, four cubits, round about the temple. ⁶ And the side chambers were in three stories, one over another, thirty in each story. There were offsets^[c] all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers, so that they should not be supported by the wall of the temple. ⁷ And the side chambers became broader as they rose^[d] from story to story, corresponding to the enlargement of the offset^[e] from story to story round about the temple; on the side of the temple a stairway led upward, and thus one went up from the lowest story to the top story through the middle story. ⁸ I saw also that the temple had a raised platform round about; the foundations of the side chambers measured a full reed of six long cubits. ⁹ The thickness of the outer wall of the side chambers was five cubits; and the part of the platform which was left free was five cubits.^[f] Between the platform^[g] of the temple and the ¹⁰ chambers of the court was a breadth of twenty cubits round about the temple on every side. ¹¹ And the doors of the side chambers opened on the part of the platform that was left free, one door toward the north, and another door toward the south; and the breadth of the part that was left free was five cubits round about.

¹² The building that was facing the temple yard on the west side was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about, and its length ninety cubits.

¹³ Then he measured the temple, a hundred cubits long; and the yard and the building with its walls, a hundred cubits long; ¹⁴ also the breadth of the east front of the temple and the yard, a hundred cubits.

¹⁵ Then he measured the length of the building facing the yard which was at the west and its walls^[h] on either side, a hundred cubits.

The nave of the temple and the inner room and the outer^[i] vestibule ¹⁶ were paneled^[j] and round about all three had windows with recessed^[k] frames. Over against the threshold the temple was paneled with wood round about, from the floor up to the windows (now the windows were covered), ¹⁷ to the space above the door, even to the inner room, and on the outside. And on all the walls round about in the inner room and the nave were carved likenesses^{[l] 18} of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub. Every cherub had two faces: ¹⁹ the face of a man toward the palm tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side. They were carved on the whole temple round about; ²⁰ from the floor to above the door cherubim and palm trees were carved on the wall.^[m]

²¹ The doorposts of the nave were squared; and in front of the holy place was something resembling ²² an altar of wood, three cubits high, two cubits long, and two cubits broad;^[n] its corners, its base,^[o] and its walls were of wood. He said to me, “This is the table which is before the Lord.” ²³ The nave and the holy place had each a double door. ²⁴ The doors had two leaves apiece, two swinging leaves for each door. ²⁵ And on the doors of the nave were carved cherubim and palm trees, such as were carved on the walls; and there was a canopy of wood in front of the vestibule outside. ²⁶ And there were recessed windows and palm trees on either side, on the sidewalls of the vestibule.^[p]

The Holy Chambers and the Outer Wall

42 Then he led me out into the inner^[q] court, toward the north, and he brought me to the chambers which were opposite the temple yard and opposite the building on the north. ² The length of the building which was on the north side^[r] was^[s] a hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty cubits. ³ Adjoining the twenty cubits which belonged to the inner court, and facing the pavement which belonged to the outer court, was gallery^[t] against gallery^[u] in three stories. ⁴ And before the chambers was a passage inward, ten cubits wide and a hundred cubits long,^[v] and their doors were on the north. ⁵ Now the upper chambers were narrower, for the galleries^[w] took more away from them than from the lower and middle chambers in the building. ⁶ For they were in three stories, and they had no pillars like the pillars of the outer^[x] court; hence the upper chambers were set back from the ground more than the lower and the middle ones. ⁷ And there was a wall outside parallel to the chambers, toward the outer court, opposite the chambers, fifty cubits long. ⁸ For the chambers on the outer court were fifty cubits long, while those opposite the temple were a hundred cubits long. ⁹ Below these chambers was an entrance on the east side, as one enters them from the outer court, ¹⁰ where the outside wall begins.^[y]

On the south^[z] also, opposite the yard and opposite the building, there were chambers ¹¹ with a passage in front of them; they were similar to the chambers on the north, of the same length and breadth, with the same exits^[aa] and arrangements and doors. ¹² And below the south chambers was an entrance on the east side, where one enters the passage, and opposite them was a dividing wall.^[ab]

¹³ Then he said to me, “The north chambers and the south chambers opposite the yard are the holy chambers, where the priests who approach the Lord shall eat the most holy offerings; there they shall put the most holy offerings—the cereal offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering, for the place is holy. ¹⁴ When the priests enter the holy place, they shall not go out of it into the outer court without laying there the garments in which they minister, for these are holy; they shall put on other garments before they go near to that which is for the people.”

¹⁵ Now when he had finished measuring the interior of the temple area, he led me out by the gate which faced east, and measured the temple area round about. ¹⁶ He measured the east side with the measuring reed, five hundred cubits by the measuring reed. ¹⁷ Then he turned and measured^[ac] the north side, five hundred cubits by the measuring reed. ¹⁸ Then he turned and measured^[ad] the south side, five hundred cubits by the measuring reed. ¹⁹ Then he turned to the west side and measured, five hundred cubits by the measuring reed. ²⁰ He measured it on the four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits broad, to make a separation between the holy and the common.