Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁶ “So you, [Yirmeyahu,] don’t pray for this people! Don’t cry, pray or intercede on their behalf with me; because I won’t listen to you. ¹⁷ Don’t you see what they are doing in the cities of Y’hudah and in the streets of Yerushalayim? ¹⁸ The children gather the wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and, just to provoke me, they pour out drink offerings to other gods! ¹⁹ Are they really provoking me,” asks Adonai, “or are they provoking themselves, to their own ruin?”

²⁰ Therefore, here is what Adonai Elohim says: “My anger and fury will be poured out on this place, on men, animals, trees in the fields and produce growing from the ground; and it will burn without being quenched.”

²¹ Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Isra’el: “You may as well eat the meat of your burnt offerings along with that of your sacrifices. ²² For I didn’t speak to your ancestors or give them orders concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. ²³ Rather, what I did order them was this: ‘Pay attention to what I say. Then I will be your God, and you will be my people. In everything, live according to the way that I order you, so that things will go well for you.’ ²⁴ But they neither listened nor paid attention, but lived according to their own plans, in the stubbornness of their evil hearts, thus going backward and not forward. ²⁵ You have done this from the day your ancestors came out of Egypt until today. Even though I sent you all my servants the prophets, sending them time after time, ²⁶ they would not listen or pay attention to me, but stiffened their necks; they did worse than their ancestors.

⁷ You are looking at the surface of things. If anyone is convinced that he belongs to the Messiah, he should remind himself that we belong to the Messiah as much as he does. ⁸ For even if I boast a little too much about the authority the Lord has given us — authority to build you up, not tear you down — I am not ashamed. ⁹ My object is not to seem as if I were trying to frighten you with these letters. ¹⁰ Someone says, “His letters are weighty and powerful, but when he appears in person he is weak, and as a speaker he is nothing.” ¹¹ Such a person should realize that what we say in our letters when absent, we will do when present.