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8 How can you say, “We are wise;
we possess the Lord’s Instruction,”
when the lying pen of the scribes has surely distorted it?
9 The wise will be shamed and shocked
when they are caught.
Look, they have rejected the Lord’s word;
what kind of wisdom is that?
10 Therefore, I will give their wives to others
and their fields to their captors.
From the least to the greatest,
all are eager to profit.
From prophet to priest,
all trade in falsehood.
11 They treat the wound of my people
as if it were nothing:
“All is well, all is well,” they insist,
when in fact nothing is well.
12 They should be ashamed
of their detestable practices,
but they have no shame;
they don’t even blush!
Therefore, they will fall among the fallen
and stumble when disaster arrives,
declares the Lord.
13 I will put an end to them,[a]
declares the Lord;
there are no grapes on the vine,
no figs on the tree,
only withered leaves.
They have squandered what I have given them![b]
A lament for God’s people
14 Why are we sitting here?
Come, let’s go to the fortified towns
and meet our doom there.
The Lord our God has doomed us
by giving us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against the Lord!
15 We longed for relief,
but received none;
for a time of healing,
but found only terror.
16 The snorting of their horses can be heard as far as Dan;
the neighing of their stallions makes the whole land tremble.
They come to devour the land and everything in it,
towns and people alike.
17 See, I’m sending serpents against you,
vipers that you can’t charm,
and they will bite you,
declares the Lord.
18 No healing,
only grief;
my heart is broken.[c]
19 Listen to the weeping of my people
all across the land:
“Isn’t the Lord in Zion?
Is her king no longer there?”
Why then did they anger me with their images,
with pointless foreign gods?
20 “The harvest is past,
the summer has ended,
yet we aren’t saved.”
21 Because my people are crushed,
I am crushed;
darkness and despair overwhelm me.
What to do with God’s people
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then have my people
not been restored to health?
9 [d] If only my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
I would weep day and night
for the wounds of my people.
2 [e] If only I could flee for shelter in the desert,
to leave my people
and forget them—
for they are all adulterers,
a bunch of crooks.
3 They bend their tongues like bows
to spew out lies;
they are renowned in the land,
but not for truth.
They go from bad to worse.
They don’t know me!
declares the Lord.
4 Be wary of your friends!
Don’t trust your sibling![f]
Every sibling is a cheater,
and every friend traffics in slander.
5 One cheats the other;
no one tells the truth;
they train themselves to lie;
they wear themselves out by doing wrong.
6 You live in a world of deceit,
and in their deceit
they refuse to know me,[g]
declares the Lord.
7 Therefore, the Lord of heavenly forces proclaims:
I’m going to refine and test them,
for what else can I do with my people?
8 Their tongue is a lethal arrow;
their words are deceitful.
They wish their neighbors well,
but in their hearts plot their ruin.
9 Shouldn’t I punish them for this?
declares the Lord;
shouldn’t I avenge such a nation?
10 I will weep and wail for the mountains,
and lament for the grazing lands in the wilderness.
They are dried up and deserted;
no sound of the flocks is heard;
no sign of birds or animals is seen;
all have vanished.
11 I will reduce Jerusalem to ruins,
a den for wild dogs.
I will make the towns of Judah a wasteland, without inhabitant.
12 Who is wise enough to understand this?
Who has been taught by the Lord
and can therefore explain it?
Why has the land been reduced to rubble
and laid waste like a desert,
with no one passing through?
13 The Lord says: It is because they have abandoned my Instruction that I gave them, and haven’t obeyed or followed it. 14 Instead, they have followed their own willful hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their ancestors taught them. 15 Therefore, this is what the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, says: I’m going to feed this people bitter food and give them poison to drink. 16 I will scatter them among nations about whom neither they nor their ancestors have ever heard. I will pursue them with the sword until all are gone.
17 The Lord of heavenly forces proclaims:
Pay attention!
Summon the women who mourn,
let them come;
send for those best trained,
let them come.
18 Hurry!
Let them weep for us
so that our eyes fill up with tears
and water streams down.
19 The sound of sobbing
is heard from Zion:
“We’re devastated!
We’re so ashamed!
We have to leave the land
and abandon our homes!”
20 Women, hear the Lord’s word.
Listen closely to the word
from his mouth:
teach your daughters to mourn;
teach each other to grieve.
21 Death has climbed through our windows;
it has entered our fortresses
to eliminate children from the streets,
the youth from the squares.
22 Declare what the Lord says:
Dead bodies will lie
like dung on the fields,
like bundles of grain after the harvest,
with no one to pick them up.
23 The Lord proclaims:
the learned should not boast of their knowledge,
nor warriors boast of their might,
nor the rich boast of their wealth.
24 No, those who boast should boast in this:
that they understand and know me.
I am the Lord who acts with kindness,
justice, and righteousness in the world,
and I delight in these things,
declares the Lord.
25 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will deal with everyone who is physically circumcised: 26 whether they are Egyptians or Judeans, Edomites or Ammonites, Moabites or the desert dwellers who cut the hair on their foreheads. All these nations are really uncircumcised; even the people of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.
Your life hidden in Christ
3 Therefore, if you were raised with Christ, look for the things that are above where Christ is sitting at God’s right side. 2 Think about the things above and not things on earth. 3 You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5 So put to death the parts of your life that belong to the earth, such as sexual immorality, moral corruption, lust, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 The wrath of God is coming upon disobedient people because of these things. 7 You used to live this way, when you were alive to these things. 8 But now set aside these things, such as anger, rage, malice, slander, and obscene language. 9 Don’t lie to each other. Take off the old human nature with its practices 10 and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it. 11 In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things and in all people.
12 Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other. 14 And over all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 15 The peace of Christ must control your hearts—a peace into which you were called in one body. And be thankful people. 16 The word of Christ must live in you richly. Teach and warn each other with all wisdom by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 Whatever you do, whether in speech or action, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him.
32 But in spite of all that, they kept sinning
and had no faith in God’s wondrous works.
33 So God brought their days to an end,
like a puff of air,
and their years in total ruin.
34 But whenever God killed them, they went after him!
They would turn and earnestly search for God.
35 They would remember that God was their rock,
that the Most High was their redeemer.
36 But they were just flattering him with lip service.
They were lying to him with their tongues.
37 Their hearts weren’t firmly set on him;
they weren’t faithful to his covenant.
38 But God, being compassionate,
kept forgiving their sins,
kept avoiding destruction;
he took back his anger so many times,
wouldn’t stir up all his wrath!
39 God kept remembering that they were just flesh,
just breath that passes and doesn’t come back.
40 How often they rebelled against God in the wilderness
and distressed him in the desert!
41 Time and time again they tested God,
provoking the holy one of Israel.
42 They didn’t remember God’s power—
the day when he saved them from the enemy;
43 how God performed his signs in Egypt,
his marvelous works in the field of Zoan.
44 God turned their rivers into blood;
they couldn’t drink from their own streams.
45 God sent swarms against them to eat them up,
frogs to destroy them.
46 God handed over their crops to caterpillars,
their land’s produce to locusts.
47 God killed their vines with hail,
their sycamore trees with frost.
48 God delivered their cattle over to disease,[a]
their herds to plagues.
49 God unleashed his burning anger against them—
fury, indignation, distress,
a troop of evil messengers.
50 God blazed a path for his wrath.
He didn’t save them from death,
but delivered their lives over to disease.
51 God struck down all of Egypt’s oldest males;
in Ham’s tents, he struck their pride and joy.
52 God led his own people out like sheep,
guiding them like a flock in the wilderness.
53 God led them in safety—they were not afraid!
But the sea engulfed their enemies!
54 God brought them to his holy territory,
to the mountain that his own strong hand had acquired.
55 God drove out the nations before them
and apportioned property for them;
he settled Israel’s tribes in their tents.
27 Get your outside work done;
make preparations in the field;
then you can build your house.
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible