Jeremiah
12 You are in the right, Jehovah, when I bring charges against you, but I will just argue a case with you. How is it that wrong-doers’ course thrives, all faithless dealers succeed? 2 You plant them, they root, spread, bear fruit too; you are near in their mouths but far from their hearts. 3* And you, Jehovah, know me, you see me, you test my mind toward you; break them out like sheep for slaughtering, dedicate them for a day of killing! 4 How long is the earth to go mourning and the herbage all over the range to dry out? for the wickedness of those who live in it beasts and birds have come to an end, because they say “He does not see our ways.”
5 Now that you have run with footmen and they have tired you, how will you compete with the ponies? in a civilized country you do not feel safe, and how will you do in the Jordan jungle? 6** For even your brothers and your father, they too have been faithless to you; they too have called out after you at the top of their voice; do not trust them because they talk kindly to you.
7 I have left my house, abandoned my estate, given my soul’s darling into his enemies’ hands. 8 My estate has become like a lion in the badlands to me; it has sounded its voice against me; therefore I have come to hate it. 9 Is my estate to me a dyed bird with the birds all round against it? Come, get together all the beasts of the field, bring them to eat. 10* Many grazers have pastured off my vineyard, trampled my estate, made out of my charming lot a desolate wilderness, 11 rendered it a desolation, it mourns desolately for me; all the country is desolate because no one pays attention. 12 Over all scalped hilltops in the wilderness have come marauders; for Jehovah has a sword that is eating from earth’s end to earth’s end, there is no peace for any mortal. 13* They have sowed wheat and reaped thorns, overworked and done no good, and are to be disappointed in their crops owing to Jehovah’s anger.
14 Says Jehovah about all my bad neighbors that touch the estate I have assigned to my people Israel, Here I am uprooting them off their soil and uprooting the house of Judah from among them. 15 And after my uprooting them I will come back and have sympathy for them and bring each back to his estate and to his country; 16 and if they shall learn my people’s ways, swearing by my name, “By Jehovah,” as they taught my people to swear by the Baal, they shall be built up among my people; 17 but if they do not listen I will uproot that nation and destroy it as I uproot it, quoth Jehovah.