The Daily Audio Bible
Today's audio is from the CEB. Switch to the CEB to read along with the audio.
8 How can you say that you are wise and that you know my laws? Look, the laws have been changed by dishonest scribes. 9 Your wise men are put to shame; they are confused and trapped. They have rejected my words; what wisdom do they have now? 10 So I will give their fields to new owners and their wives to other men. Everyone, great and small, tries to make money dishonestly. Even prophets and priests cheat the people. 11 (A)They act as if my people's wounds were only scratches. ‘All is well,’ they say, when all is not well. 12 (B)My people, were you ashamed because you did these disgusting things? No, you were not ashamed at all; you don't even know how to blush! And so you will fall as others have fallen; when I punish you, that will be the end of you. I, the Lord, have spoken.
13 “I wanted to gather my people, as a farmer gathers a harvest; but they are like a vine with no grapes, like a fig tree with no figs; even the leaves have withered. Therefore, I have allowed outsiders to take over the land.”[a]
14 “Why are we sitting still?” God's people ask. “Come on, we will run to the fortified cities and die there. The Lord our God has condemned us to die; he has given us poison to drink, because we have sinned against him. 15 We hoped for peace and a time of healing, but it was no use; terror came instead. 16 Our enemies are already in the city of Dan; we hear the snorting of their horses. The whole land trembles when their horses neigh. Our enemies have come to destroy our land and everything in it, our city and all its people.”
17 “Watch out!” the Lord says, “I am sending snakes among you, poisonous snakes that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you.”
Jeremiah's Sorrow for His People
18 My sorrow cannot be healed;[b]
I am sick at heart.
19 Listen! Throughout the land
I hear my people crying out,
“Is the Lord no longer in Zion?
Is Zion's king no longer there?”
The Lord, their king, replies,
“Why have you made me angry by worshiping your idols
and by bowing down to your useless foreign gods?”
20 The people cry out,
“The summer is gone, the harvest is over,
but we have not been saved.”
21 My heart has been crushed
because my people are crushed;
I mourn; I am completely dismayed.
22 Is there no medicine in Gilead?[c]
Are there no doctors there?
Why, then, have my people not been healed?
9 I wish my head were a well of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I could cry day and night
for my people who have been killed.
2 I wish I had a place to stay in the desert
where I could get away from my people.
They are all unfaithful,
a mob of traitors.
3 They are always ready to tell lies;
dishonesty instead of truth rules the land.
The Lord says,
“My people do one evil thing after another
and do not acknowledge me as their God.”
4 Everyone must be on guard against their friends,
and no one can trust their relatives;
for all relatives are as deceitful as Jacob,
and everyone slanders their friends.
5-6 They all mislead their friends,
and no one tells the truth;
they have taught their tongues to lie
and will not give up their sinning.
They do one violent thing after another,
and one deceitful act follows another.
The Lord says that his people reject him.
7 Because of this the Lord Almighty says,
“I will refine my people like metal
and put them to the test.
My people have done evil—
what else can I do with them?
8 Their tongues are like deadly arrows;
they always tell lies.
Everyone speaks friendly words to their neighbors,
but they are really setting a trap for them.
9 Will I not punish them for these things?
Will I not take revenge on a nation like this?
I, the Lord, have spoken.”
10 I said, “I will mourn for the mountains
and weep for the pastures,
because they have dried up,
and no one travels through them.
The sound of livestock is no longer heard;
birds and wild animals have fled and gone.”
11 The Lord says, “I will make Jerusalem a pile of ruins,
a place where jackals live;
the cities of Judah will become a desert,
a place where no one lives.”
12 I asked, “Lord, why is the land devastated and dry as a desert, so that no one travels through it? Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom have you explained it so that they can tell others?”
13 The Lord answered, “This has happened because my people have abandoned the teaching that I gave them. They have not obeyed me or done what I told them. 14 Instead, they have been stubborn and have worshiped the idols of Baal as their ancestors taught them to do. 15 So then, listen to what I, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, will do: I will give my people bitter plants to eat and poison to drink. 16 I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have heard about, and I will send armies against them until I have completely destroyed them.”
The People of Jerusalem Cry Out for Help
17 The Lord Almighty said,
“Think about what is happening!
Call for the mourners to come,
for the women who sing funeral songs.”
18 The people said,
“Tell them to hurry and sing a funeral song for us,
until our eyes fill with tears,
and our eyelids are wet from crying.”
19 Listen to the sound of crying in Zion:
“We are ruined!
We are completely disgraced!
We must leave our land;
our homes have been torn down.”
20 I said,
“Listen to the Lord, you women,
and pay attention to his words.
Teach your daughters how to mourn,
and your friends how to sing a funeral song.
21 Death has come in through our windows
and entered our palaces;
it has cut down the children in the streets
and the young men in the marketplaces.
22 Dead bodies are scattered everywhere,
like piles of manure on the fields,
like grain cut and left behind by the reapers,
grain that no one gathers.
This is what the Lord has told me to say.”
23 The Lord says,
“The wise should not boast of their wisdom,
nor the strong of their strength,
nor the rich of their wealth.
24 (C)If any want to boast,
they should boast that they know and understand me,
because my love is constant,
and I do what is just and right.
These are the things that please me.
I, the Lord, have spoken.”
25-26 The Lord says, “The time is coming when I will punish the people of Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and the desert people, who have their hair cut short.[d] All these people are circumcised, but have not kept the covenant it symbolizes. None of these people and none of the people of Israel have kept my covenant.”
3 (A)You have been raised to life with Christ, so set your hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on his throne at the right side of God. 2 Keep your minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 Your real life is Christ and when he appears, then you too will appear with him and share his glory!
The Old Life and the New
5 You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed (for greed is a form of idolatry). 6 Because of such things God's anger will come upon those who do not obey him.[a] 7 At one time you yourselves used to live according to such desires, when your life was dominated by them.
8 But now you must get rid of all these things: anger, passion, and hateful feelings. No insults or obscene talk must ever come from your lips. 9 (B)Do not lie to one another, for you have put off the old self with its habits 10 (C)and have put on the new self. This is the new being which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in his own image, in order to bring you to a full knowledge of himself. 11 As a result, there is no longer any distinction between Gentiles and Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians, savages, slaves, and free, but Christ is all, Christ is in all.
12 (D)You are the people of God; he loved you and chose you for his own. So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 (E)Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you. 14 And to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity. 15 The peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the decisions you make; for it is to this peace that God has called you together in the one body. And be thankful. 16 (F)Christ's message in all its richness must live in your hearts. Teach and instruct one another with all wisdom. Sing psalms, hymns, and sacred songs; sing to God with thanksgiving in your hearts. 17 Everything you do or say, then, should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, as you give thanks through him to God the Father.
32 In spite of all this the people kept sinning;
in spite of his miracles they did not trust him.
33 So he ended their days like a breath
and their lives with sudden disaster.
34 Whenever he killed some of them,
the rest would turn to him;
they would repent and pray earnestly to him.
35 They remembered that God was their protector,
that the Almighty came to their aid.
36 But their words were all lies;
nothing they said was sincere.
37 (A)They were not loyal to him;
they were not faithful to their covenant with him.
38 But God was merciful to his people.
He forgave their sin
and did not destroy them.
Many times he held back his anger
and restrained his fury.
39 He remembered that they were only mortal beings,
like a wind that blows by and is gone.
40 How often they rebelled against him in the desert;
how many times they made him sad!
41 Again and again they put God to the test
and brought pain to the Holy God of Israel.
42 They forgot his great power
and the day when he saved them from their enemies
43 and performed his mighty acts and miracles
in the plain of Zoan in the land of Egypt.
44 (B)He turned the rivers into blood,
and the Egyptians had no water to drink.
45 (C)He sent flies among them, that tormented them,
and frogs that ruined their land.
46 (D)He sent locusts to eat their crops
and to destroy their fields.
47 (E)He killed their grapevines with hail
and their fig trees with frost.
48 He killed their cattle with hail
and their flocks with lightning.[a]
49 He caused them great distress
by pouring out his anger and fierce rage,
which came as messengers of death.
50 He did not restrain his anger
or spare their lives,
but killed them with a plague.
51 (F)He killed the first-born sons
of all the families of Egypt.
52 (G)Then he led his people out like a shepherd
and guided them through the desert.
53 (H)He led them safely, and they were not afraid;
but the sea came rolling over their enemies.
54 (I)He brought them to his holy land,
to the mountains which he himself conquered.
55 (J)He drove out the inhabitants as his people advanced;
he divided their land among the tribes of Israel
and gave their homes to his people.
27 Don't build your house and establish a home until your fields are ready, and you are sure that you can earn a living.
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.