Have you not brought this on yourselves by forsaking the Lord your God when he led you in the way?

How skilled you are at pursuing love! Even the worst of women can learn from your ways.

Why do you go about so much, changing your ways? You will be disappointed by Egypt as you were by Assyria.

A cry is heard on the barren heights, the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel, because they have perverted their ways and have forgotten the Lord their God.

and if in a truthful, just and righteous way you swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ then the nations will invoke blessings by him and in him they will boast.”

I thought, “These are only the poor; they are foolish, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.

So I will go to the leaders and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.” But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke and torn off the bonds.

The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

“I have made you a tester of metals and my people the ore, that you may observe and test their ways.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.

If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly,

This is what the Lord says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them.

Jeremiah’s Complaint

You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?

And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives’—even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal—then they will be established among my people.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

I will winnow them with a winnowing fork at the city gates of the land. I will bring bereavement and destruction on my people, for they have not changed their ways.

My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.

“Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’

Yet my people have forgotten me; they burn incense to worthless idols, which made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths. They made them walk in byways, on roads not built up.

“Furthermore, tell the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death.

I warned you when you felt secure, but you said, ‘I will not listen!’ This has been your way from your youth; you have not obeyed me.

But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.

They said, “Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways and your evil practices, and you can stay in the land the Lord gave to you and your ancestors for ever and ever.

Perhaps they will listen and each will turn from their evil ways. Then I will relent and not inflict on them the disaster I was planning because of the evil they have done.