The Book of Jeremiah
1 The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkijah, one of the priests at ʽAnathoth in Benjamin, 2 to whom Jehovah’s word came in the time of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the year ten of his reign; 3 and it came in the times of Jehojakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, till the eleventh year of Sidkijah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, was done, till Jerusalem was deported in the fifth month.
4 And Jehovah’s word came to me, saying 5 “Before I shaped you in a mother’s body I knew you and before you came out of a womb I consecrated you; I have constituted you a prophet to the nations.”
6 And I said “O, O, my Lord Jehovah! why, I do not know how to speak, because I am a boy.”
7 And Jehovah said to me “Do not say ‘I am a boy,’ for you shall go against whatever I send you against and speak whatever I commission you to; 8 do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, quoth Jehovah.” 9 And Jehovah put out his hand and touched my mouth; and Jehovah said to me 10* “Here I have put my words ins your mouth: see, I appoint you over the nations and kingdoms this day to uproot and pull down and destroy and demolish, to build and to plant.”
11* And Jehovah’s word came to me “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said “I see an almond twig.” 12 And Jehovah said to me “You see well, for I pay attention to my word to carry it out.”
13 And Jehovah’s word came to me a second time “What do you see?” I said “I see a boiling kettle facing northward.” 14* And Jehovah said to me “From the north disaster will boil up against all the inhabitants of the earth; 15 for here I am summoning all the northern kingdoms, quoth Jehovah, and they shall come and each set his throne at the gates of Jerusalem and before her walls and before all the cities of Judah, 16 and I will present my case against them for all their viciousness, their having left me and made burnings to other gods and done reverence to the work of their hands. 17* But for your part you are to gird your waist and stand up and speak to them everything that I commission you to. Do not be dismayed at them, or I will dismay you before them. 18* Here have I today made you a fortified city and a bronze wall to the kings of Judah, its priests, and the common people; 19 and they shall attack you, but they shall not get the best of you, because I am with you, quoth Jehovah, to deliver you.”
2* And Jehovah’s word came to me 2 “Go and proclaim publicly at Jerusalem ‘Says Jehovah, I remember the friendship of your girlhood, the love of your honeymoon, your following me in the wilderness, in an unplanted country. 3 Israel was a thing sacred to Jehovah, the first of his crop, whose eaters all had to expiate it: mischief came upon them, quoth Jehovah.
4 “‘Listen to Jehovah’s word, house of Jacob and all clans of the house of Israel. 5 Says Jehovah, What unfairness did your fathers find in me that they went far away from me and ran into superstitions and became slaves to them, 6 and did not say “Where is Jehovah who brought us up out of Egypt, who led us on in the wilderness, in a country of desert and pitfall, a country of drought and gloom, a country where no man passed and no human beings lived there” 7 —and I brought you into the country of garden-soil to feed on its fruits and its good things, and you came in and defiled my country and made my estate an abomination. 8 The priests did not say “Where is Jehovah?”, those who had charge of giving rulings did not know me, the shepherds rebelled against me, and the prophets prophesied by the Baal and followed what did no good.
9 “‘So I will have it out with you again, quoth Jehovah, and with your children’s children. 10 For go over to the Cyprian coasts, and see, and send to Kedar and observe thoroughly, and see if there has occurred the like of this. 11 Has a nation changed gods? and those are not gods; but my people has changed its glory for what does no good. 12 Skies, stand aghast at this and shudder, go utterly blank, quoth Jehovah. 13 For my people has done two hurtful things: left me, a fount of living water, for cutting out cisterns of their own, broken cisterns that will not hold water.
14 “‘Is Israel a slave or is he a menial horn? how is it he has become an object of plunder? 15 Young lions roar at him, they have given tongue and have made his country a desolation, his cities are ruined, left without an inhabitant. 16* The sons of Memphis and Tehaphnehes too have sheared you to the scalp. 17* Is it not your leaving your God Jehovah at the time of his conducting you on the road that has done this to you? 18 And now what business have you on the road to Egypt to drink water of the Delta River? or what business have you on the road to Assyria to drink Euphrates water? 19 Your own wickedness will chastise you and your own backslidings correct you: see for yourself that your leaving your God Jehovah and not having the dread of me upon you is a bad and bitter thing, quoth Jehovah of Armies.
20 “‘For since ancient times you have broken your yoke and snapped your tether and said “I will not work,” but on every high hill and under every verdant tree you have been sprawling in prostitution. 21* And I had planted you from Sorek stock, altogether genuine seed; how is it turned degenerate, a foreign vine, on my hands! 22 For even if you wash with soda and take quantities of lye, your guilt is a stain before me, quoth the Lord Jehovah.
23 “‘How can you say “I have not been defiled, have not followed the Baals”? See your course in the valley; know what you have done. 24 A she-camel in heat, running on this course and that; a wild ass wonted to wilderness, gulping the wind in its eagerness of appetite; who is to turn back her lust? any that look for her will not tire themselves out; in her month they will find her. 25* Refuse to get your feet sore and your throat thirsty; but you said “Not I; no, I love outsiders and will follow them.”
26 “‘As a thief is ashamed when he is caught, so the house of Israel will come to shame, they, their kings, their generals, and their priests and prophets: 27 people that say to the wood “You are our father” and to the stone “It was you gave birth to us”; for they have turned their backs to me, not their faces, but in their time of trouble they will say “Stand up and save us.” 28* And where are your gods you made for yourself? let them stand up if they will save you in your time of trouble, for your gods are as many as your cities, Judah.
29 “‘Why should you upbraid me? you have all rebelled against me, quoth Jehovah. 30 I have beaten your sons to no purpose, they have not learned by it. Swords have eaten up your prophets like a ravaging lion, and you have not been afraid; 31* see Jehovah’s word! Says Jehovah, Have I been a wilderness to Israel, or a country of murky gloom? how is it my people say “We are off, we will not come to you again”? 32 Will a maiden forget her jewelry, a bride her ribbons? but my people have forgotten me for an incalculable time. 33 How fine you have made your course to look for love! so I have wonted your courses to bad times too.
34** “‘On your garments was found, too, the lifeblood of innocent poor men; you had not found them breaking in, but it was for all these. 35 And you thought “Because I am innocent, it must be his anger has gone back from me.” Here I am going to plead my case against you for your saying “I have not sinned.” 36 How downright recklessly you change courses! you will be disappointed in Egypt the same as you were in Assyria; 37 from there too you will come out with your hands on your head, for Jehovah disdains what you rely on, you are not to be successful with it.
3** “‘Suppose a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and belongs to another man, and goes back to him again, will not that woman be absolutely polluted? but you have been prostituting yourself with many mates and coming back to me, quoth Jehovah. 2* Raise your eyes to the scalped hills and see where you have not been lain with; you sat by roadside for them like an Arab robber in the wilderness, and polluted the country with your prostitution and vileness. 3 And showers were withheld and there was no spring rain, but you had a prostitute’s forehead, you refused to be humiliated. 4 Have you not just now been calling me “Father,” “Mate of my girlhood”? 5*** “Will he harbor a grudge forever, or keep it up perpetually?” Here you have talked and done the bad things and made a success.’”
6 And Jehovah said to me in the time of King Josiah “Have you seen what Inconstancy Israel did? she went on every high mountain and under every verdant tree and prostituted herself there, 7 and I thought ‘After she does all this she will come back to me,’ but she did not. 8* And her sister Faithlessness Judah saw it and saw that forasmuch as Inconstancy Israel had committed adultery I had separated from her and given her her certificate of divorce, and her sister Faithlessness Judah was not afraid but went and prostituted herself too, 9 and from the wantonness of her prostitution the country was polluted, and she went into adultery with stones and sticks. 10 And even with all this, Faithlessness Judah did not come back to me with all her heart, but insincerely,” quoth Jehovah.
11 And Jehovah said to me “Inconstancy Israel has shown herself more honorable than Faithlessness Judah. 12* Go and call out these words northward: ‘Come back, Inconstancy Israel, quoth Jehovah: I will not scowl at you again, for I am ready to be friends, quoth Jehovah, I will not hold the grudge forever; 13* only be conscious of your guilt, that you have rebelled against your God Jehovah and run loose for aliens under every verdant tree and you have not obeyed me, quoth Jehovah.
14 “‘Come back, truant children, quoth Jehovah, because I have a claim to you and will take you one out of a city and two out of a clan and bring you to Sion 15 and give you shepherds that are to my mind, and they shall shepherd you expertly and cannily. 16 And when you multiply and are prolific in the country in those days, quoth Jehovah, they shall not still say “The ark of the covenant of the Holy One of Israel,” nor shall it come into their mind; nor shall they mention it nor miss it, nor shall it be remade. 17 At that time they shall call Jerusalem Jehovah’s throne and all nations shall collect at Jerusalem for Jehovah’s fame, and not again follow the willful way of their wicked hearts. 18 In those days the house of Judah shall go to the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the north country to the country I established them in.
19* “‘But I had thought I would absolutely count you among sons and give you a choice country, an estate most splendid of the splendors of nations; and I had thought you would call me “Father” and not turn back from following me; 20* yet in fact, as a woman faithlessly forsakes her mate, so you have been faithless to me, house of Israel, quoth Jehovah.
21** “‘A voice is heard on the scalped hills, the weeping of the sons of Israel in supplication, because they have warped their courses, forgotten their God Jehovah. 22* Come back, truant children, let me cure your truant habits. “Here we are, we are yours, because you are our God Jehovah. 23* After all, the tallness of hills, the uproar of mountains, is a fraud; after all, it is in our God Jehovah that Israel’s salvation is. 24 And the Baal ate up what came of our fathers’ toil from our childhood, their sheep and their cattle, their sons and their daughters. 25 We will lie down in our shame and let our disgrace cover us, because we have sinned against our God Jehovah, we and our fathers, from our childhood to this day, and not obeyed our God Jehovah.”
4 If you come back, Israel, to me you shall come back; and if you clear away your disgusting idols from before me and do not roam, 2 and swear “By Jehovah” faithfully and lawfully and honestly, nations shall bless by him and pride themselves on his friendship.’”
3* For Jehovah says to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem “Break new ground and do not sow into thorns. 4 Circumcise yourselves to your God and cut off the foreskins from your hearts, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, for fear my choler should start out like a fire and burn unquenchably at the wickedness of your practices.
5 “Announce in Jerusalem and herald in Judah, and say ‘Blow a ram-horn in the country, call out at the top of your voice and say “In with you, let us get into the fortified cities; 6 raise a signal at Sion, get under cover, do not stop; for I am bringing mischief out of the north, and a great catastrophe. 7 A lion has come up out of its thicket, a ravager of nations is on the move; he has come out of his place to make your country a desolation, your cities shall be ruined and without inhabitant. 8 For this tie sackcloths round you, wail and howl; for Jehovah’s anger has not gone back from us.”’”
9 And on that day, quoth Jehovah, the king and the generals shall be dumbfounded, and the priests shall stand aghast and the prophets be mystified, 10** and say “O, O, Lord Jehovah! why, you have been deluding this people and Jerusalem, saying ‘There is to be peace’ when a sword is touching the life.” 11 At that time this people and Jerusalem shall be told “A wind of glaring scalped heights in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, not for winnowing and not for cleaning, 12 a wind too full for these is coming for me”; now I will take my turn and prosecute my case against them.
13 Here he comes up like clouds and his chariot like a gale; his ponies are swifter than vultures; woe to us, we are smitten! 14 Wash your heart from wickedness, Jerusalem, that you may be saved; how long will you harbor your schemes of villainy? 15 For I hear the voice of one reporting from Dan and announcing villainy from the highland of Ephraim. 16*** They have notified the nations, here they have summoned them against Jerusalem. 17 Watchers are coming from a faraway country and have raised their voices against the cities of Judah; she has them against her on all sides like field-guards, because she disobeyed me, quoth Jehovah.
18* Your course and your practices have done these things to you; this is what comes of your wickedness, that it is bitter, that it goes to your heart.
19 My vitals, my vitals! I ache in the walls of my heart; my heart is in turmoil, I am not to keep still, because my soul hears the sound of a ram-horn, the cheers of battle. 20 Disaster meets disaster, because all the country is wrecked; my homes are wrecked suddenly, my tents in a moment. 21 How long shall I see ensigns and hear ram-horn blasts?
22 Because my people are ignorant, they do not know me, they are foolish children, they are not intelligent, they are wise for doing bad things but do not know how to do good.
23* I saw on the earth and found it a blank chaos; and in the sky, and its light was not there; 24 I saw the mountains and they were shaking, and all the hills tossing; 25 I saw and found there was no humankind, and every bird of the air had taken flight; 26 I saw and found the gardenland was a wilderness and all its cities broken down before Jehovah, before his anger. 27* For Jehovah says “All the earth shall be a desolation, but I will not make it total. 28* For this the earth shall mourn and the sky turn black overhead, because I have spoken, have formed a design, and I have not repented and will not go back from it.” 29** At the noise of horseman and archer every village is in flight; they have gone into the caves and hidden in the bushes and climbed the rocks; every city is deserted and there is not a man living in them. 30* And you, victim, what do you accomplish that you dress in scarlet, that you bedeck yourself with jewels of gold, that you outline your eyes with antimony? in vain you beautify yourself; gallants do not want you, they are after your life. 31 For I hear a voice like a woman in childbirth, distress as if of one having a first child, the voice of the daughter of Sion panting, reaching out her hands, “O me! my being is all unstrung for killers.”
5* Range through the streets of Jerusalem, look and learn, and search her squares, whether you find a man, whether there is one that does the right thing, that aims at good faith, and I should forgive it, quoth Jehovah. 2* They say “By Jehovah”; they are sworn to lies after all; 3 Jehovah, are your eyes not on the side of good faith? You struck them, but they were not put out of health; you stamped them out, they refused to take a lesson; they made their faces stonier than a cliff, they refused to turn back. 4 But I thought “They are just poor folks, they make fools of themselves because they do not know Jehovah’s way, the law of their God; 5 I will go to the big men and talk with them, because they know Jehovah’s way, the law of their God”; they themselves had together broken yoke and snapped tether. 6 Therefore a lion out of badlands strikes them down, desert wolves make havoc of them, a leopard is watching by their cities—everyone who comes out of them falls a prey; because their rebellions are many and their apostasies numerous. 7* On what ground should I forgive you? your sons have left me and sworn by what are not gods, and I gave them full meals and they took to adultery and colonized themselves in a prostitute’s house. 8* They became foddered teaser-ponies, each neighing after its neighbor’s wife. 9* Am I not to punish these things, quoth Jehovah, or not to have my revenge on such a nation as this?
10** Go up among its trellises and ravage, but do not give the finishing stroke; take off its tendrils, because they do not belong to Jehovah; 11 for the house of Israel and the house of Judah have played me false, quoth Jehovah. 12 They have denied Jehovah and said “Not he; no harm will come upon us, we shall not see warfare and famine; 13*** the prophets will fade away, they have not the word in them; so shall they be dealt with.” 14* So Jehovah the God of Armies says “Since they say this thing, here I am making my word in your mouth a fire and this people wood, and it shall eat them up. 15 Here I am bringing a nation against you from far away, house of Israel,” quoth Jehovah; “it is an elemental nation, it is a primeval nation, it is a nation whose language you do not know and will not understand what they say. 16 Their quiver is an open grave; they are all champions; 17 and they will eat up your harvest and your bread, eat up your sons and your daughters, eat up your sheep and your cattle, eat up your grapevine and your fig-tree; they will lay waste with the sword your fortified cities that you trust in. 18 And I will not make an end with you in those days either,” quoth Jehovah.
19* And when they say “In return for what has our God Jehovah done all these things to us?” you shall say to them “As you left me and worshiped foreign gods in your country, so you shall be subject to aliens in a country not your own.”
20 Tell this among the house of Jacob and give out in Judah 21 “Listen to this, foolish and senseless people that have eyes but do not see, have ears but do not hear: 22 Will you not fear me, quoth Jehovah, or be in trepidation before me, who have made sand a limit for the sea, a perpetual mark that it is not to pass? its waves roll but can do nothing, roar but do not pass it. 23 But this people has a stubborn and disobedient heart, they have broken away and gone, 24* and not said to themselves ‘Let us fear our God Jehovah, who gives rain, fall rains and spring rains in season, keeping for us the system of harvest-time’; 25* your offenses have deranged these and your sins have withheld good from you. 26* For among my people are found miscreants peering as bird-catchers peer; they have set up a deadfall, they catch men; 27* just like a basket full of birds their houses are full of swindle; that is how they have become great and rich 28** and fat. They have thought, and also wrought, wicked things: they have not executed justice, the justice due to an orphan, so as to prosper, nor vindicated poor men’s rights. 29 Am I not to punish these things, quoth Jehovah, or not to have my revenge on such a nation as this? 30 A burning shame and horror has come about in the country: 31* the prophets prophesy by sham inspiration and the priests give instructions on the same level, and my people love that sort of thing; and what will you do about the upshot?”
6 Get under cover, sons of Benjamin, out of Jerusalem, and blow a ram-horn at Tekoaʽ and raise a signal at Beth-hak-Kerem, because misfortune looms from the north and a great disaster. 2* To the dainty meadow, the heights of the daughter of Sion, 3 will come shepherds and their flocks; they plant their tents by it all round, they graze each one his side. 4* They launch an attack against it: “Up, let us scale it in broad daylight!—Alack, the day has begun to sink, the evening shadows are spreading!— 5 Up, let us scale it by night and ravage its palaces!”
6 For Jehovah of Hosts says “Cut its trees and throw up a ramp against Jerusalem.”
Woe to the fast city with bad debts all through it! 7** As a cistern keeps its water cool, so does she her wickedness; outrage and rapine are heard of in her, sores and wounds confront me all the time. 8 Take your lesson to heart, Jerusalem, for fear my mind should be estranged from you, for fear I should make you into a desolation, an uninhabited country.
9** Says Jehovah of Armies, Look for last grapes, look for last grapes, in the remnant of Israel as if on a grapevine; pass your hand over its canes again like a grape-gatherer. 10* To whom shall I speak and warn, and have them listen? here their ears are coated over, they cannot sharpen them; here has Jehovah’s word become for them a farce for which they have no fancy. 11 But I am full of Jehovah’s ire, overtaxed with holding in; pour it out on child at play in the street and on coterie of young men together; for man and woman as well shall be caught, old man and oldest, 12** and their houses shall pass to others, lands and wives and all, because I will stretch out my hand over the inhabitants of the country, quoth Jehovah. 13 For from the least to the greatest they are all moneymaking; from prophet to priest they are all playing false; 14 and they have doctored my people’s broken bones triflingly, saying “All right, all right,” when nothing is all right. 15* They have brought shame on themselves because they have done detestable things, but they have no sense of shame, neither do they know enough to be humiliated. So they shall fall among the rest that fall, at their time of punishment they shall stumble, says Jehovah.
16 Said Jehovah, “Stand over roads and see them, and ask about old-time paths, which one is the good road, and go by it, and find ease for your souls”—and they said “We will not”; 17 “and I will set up watchmen over you; listen for the sound of a ram-horn”—and they said “We will not.” 18* So listen, nations, and know, congregation of the sky; 19 listen, earth: here I am bringing ills upon this people, the fruit of their policies, because they paid no attention to my words and rejected my instructions. 20 What do I want of this, frankincense coming from Sheba and sweet flag from a distant country? your burnt-offerings are not acceptable and your sacrifices are flavorless for me. 21* So Jehovah says “Here I am putting stumbling-blocks in this people’s way, on which they shall stumble, fathers and sons together; neighbors and fellow-townsmen shall perish.”
22 Says Jehovah, Here comes a people from northern parts, and a great nation is roused from earth’s recesses, 23** wielding bow and javelin; it is cruel and unfeeling, and the sound of it roars like the sea; on ponies and chariots it is in line like a fire for battle against you, daughter of Sion. 24 We have heard the report of it and lost heart; distress has seized upon us, pangs like those of a woman in childbirth. 25 Do not go out to the fields, do not walk on the road, for there is an enemy with a sword, a terror on every side. 26 Daughter of my people, tie on a sackcloth and daub yourself with ashes; make an only son’s mourning, a bitter wailing; for the ravager is coming upon us suddenly.
27* I have made you an assayer in my people, a fortress, and you are to know and assay their courses. 28* They are all gone off in stubbornness, scandalmongers, copper and iron; they are all vicious. 29* Bellows grow hot with fire, all the lead is used up—its smelter has smelted in vain, bad parts do not break away; 30 they are called waste silver, for Jehovah has discarded them as worthless.
7 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah with the instruction 2* “Stand in the gate of Jehovah’s house and proclaim this word there, and say ‘Hear Jehovah’s word, all Judah that come in at these gates to do reverence to Jehovah:
3* “‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Make your courses and practices good, and I will neighbor with you in this place. 4 Do not put trust in lying phrases, “Jehovah’s temple, Jehovah’s temple, Jehovah’s temple they are.” 5 For if you shall make your courses and practices good, if you shall do justice between man and man, 6 not refuse it to immigrant, orphan, and widow nor shed innocent blood in this place, and not follow other gods for your own harm, 7** I will neighbor with you in this place, in the country I gave to your fathers, from age to age; 8 but here are you putting useless trust in lying phrases. 9 Stealing, murdering, and adultery, and false swearing and making burnings to the Baal and following other gods that you had never known— 10 and will you come and stand before this house that wears my name and say “We are delivered” in order to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house that wears my name become an outlaws’ cave in your eyes? you will find I too have seen it all, quoth Jehovah. 12 For go to my place at Shiloh where I fixed the seat of my name at first, and see what I did to it for the misdeeds of my people Israel; 13** and now as you have done all these deeds and I spoke to you and you did not listen, called and you did not answer, 14 I will do to the house that wears my name in which you are putting trust, and to the place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I did to Shiloh, 15 and I will throw you aside as I did your brothers, all the descendants of Ephraim.’
16 “And for yourself, do not pray for this people, do not put up appeal and prayer for them, do not intercede with me; for I am not going to hear you. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18* the children are picking up wood and the fathers making the fires and the women kneading dough to make cauvan-cakes for the Queen of the Sky and pour libations to other gods, to gall me. 19 Is it me they are galling? quoth Jehovah; is it not themselves, to bring shame on their faces?
20* “So the Lord Jehovah says, Here is my anger and resentment poured out on this place, on man and beast, on tree in the field and fruit of the soil, and it shall blaze and not go out. 21* Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Add your burnt-offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat! For on the day of bringing your fathers out of Egypt 22 I did not speak with them, nor give them commands, in regard to burnt-offering and sacrifice, 23 but gave them this command: ‘Obey me and you shall have me for your God and I will have you for my people; and walk the road I command you all the way, that you may be well off’; 24** but they did not listen nor turn their ears, but walked in their willful wicked way and became all back and no face, 25* from the day your fathers came out of Egypt to this day. And I sent to you all my servants the prophets, each one early, 26 but they did not listen to me nor turn their ears, but stiffened up their necks, did worse than their fathers. 27 And you shall speak this word to them, but they will not listen to you, and you shall call to them but they will not answer you. 28 And you shall say to them ‘This is the nation that did not obey Jehovah nor take a lesson; good faith is lost out of their mouths.’ 29 Shear off your locks and throw them away, and strike up a lamentation on the scalped heights; for Jehovah has repudiated and abandoned the generation he is enraged with. 30 For the sons of Israel have done what displeases me, quoth Jehovah; they have placed their disgusting idols in the house that wears my name to defile it, 31 and have built the Fire-Pit Height in Ben-Hinnom’s Valley to burn up their children, which I had not commanded nor thought of.
32 “So here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when they shall no longer say ‘Fire-Pit’ nor ‘Ben-Hinnom’s Valley’ but ‘Slaughter Valley,’ and they shall bury in the Fire-Pit for want of room; 33 and the carcasses of this people shall become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth with nobody to alarm them. 34 And out of the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem I will abolish the voice of rejoicing and of merrymaking, the voice of bridegroom and of bride, for the country shall fall to ruins.
8 At that time, quoth Jehovah, they shall bring out the bones of Judah’s kings and generals and of the priests and prophets and of the inhabitants of Jerusalem out of their graves 2 and spread them out to the sun and moon and all the legions of the sky, which they have loved and worshiped and followed and invoked and done reverence to; they shall not be gathered up nor buried, they shall be just dung lying over the soil; 3* and death shall be preferable to life for all the surviving remnant of this clan in all the places I have banished them to, quoth Jehovah of Armies.
4 “And say to them ‘Says Jehovah, Does one fall and not get up? or go back and not come on again? 5 how comes it this people is recreant in continuous inconstancy? they hold on to dishonesty, they refuse to turn back. 6* I have listened and heard; they are not talking straightforwardly. There is not a man that repents of his fault with “What have I been doing?” they are everyone roving wherever they can run, like a pony running about in a battle. 7* Even the stork in the sky knows its dates, and the turtledove and swallow and crane keep their times for coming; but my people do not know Jehovah’s law. 8 How are you to say “We are wise and have Jehovah’s law on hand”? why, scribes’ lying pens have made it a lie. 9* Wise men are put to shame, dismayed and caught; for they have rejected Jehovah’s word, and what do they have wisdom about? 10* So I will give their wives to others, their lands to dispossessors. 11 —— 12 —— 13* I will sweep them up, quoth Jehovah; there are no grapes on the vine and no figs on the tree, and the leaves are faded, and I have given them such as pass through them.’”
14 What are we sitting here for? in with you, let us get into the fortified cities and sink into silence there; for our God Jehovah has sunk us in silence and given us poppy-juice to drink because we had sinned against Jehovah. 15 We look for things to be all right, and there is nothing good; for a time of healing, and we find dissolution.
16 The snorting of his ponies is heard from Dan; all the earth shakes with the sound of the neighing of his chargers; and they come and eat up country and resources, city and inhabitants. 17 For here I am sending you cobra snakes for which there is no charm, and they will bite you incurably. 18* I am burdened with sorrow, with an unstrung heart. 19 Hark, the clamor of the daughter of my people from a far country “Is Jehovah not in Sion? is her King not in her?”
How came you to be provoking me with your carvings, your foreign superstitions? 20 Harvest is past, fruit-picking is done, and we are not saved. 21* At the maiming of the daughter of my people I am maimed, I go black, horror has seized me. 22 Is there no balm in Gilead or is there no physician there? for how is it there is no healing coming on the wounds of the daughter of my people?
9 If only my head were water and my eyes a fount of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
2* If only I were in the wilderness, in a camping-place by the trail, to leave my people and go from them! for they are all adulterers, a procession of faithless men, 3* and bend their tongues as a bow; falsehood and not good faith dominates in the country. For they proceed from wickedness to wickedness, and me they do not know, quoth Jehovah. 4** Beware of your friends, and do not rely on any brother; for every brother will jacob and every friend will carry scandal; 5* and they trifle with their word to each other and do not speak truth; they have taught their tongues to speak falsehood; they play foul, they tire themselves out weaving extortion into extortion and fraud into fraud; 6* they refuse to know me, quoth Jehovah. 7* So Jehovah of Armies says, Here I am going to smelt and assay them—for what am I to do on account of the wickedness of the daughter of my people? 8* Their tongue is a throat-cutting arrow, the words of their mouths are false; one talks peace to another but inwardly is laying an ambush for him. 9 Am I not to punish them for these things, quoth Jehovah, or is my soul not to take its revenge on a nation such as this?
10 Over the mountains I will raise a weeping and a lament, and over wilderness pastures a threnody, because they are so singed that there is not a man passing through, they hear no sounds of stock, birds of the air and beasts and all have made off and are gone. 11 And I will make Jerusalem into stone-heaps, a retreat of jackals; and the cities of Judah I will make a desolation without inhabitant.
12 Who is the wise man to understand this, and the one to whom Jehovah’s mouth has spoken, to tell it? On what account has the country perished, is it singed off like the wilderness, without any to pass through? 13* And Jehovah says “On account of their departing from my instructions which I had put before them, not obeying me 14* but following the willful way of their hearts and the Baals that their fathers had taught them.” 15 So Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says “Here I am going to feed them wormwood and give them drink of poppy-juice, 16 and scatter them among the nations that they and their fathers had never known, and let the sword loose after them till I finish them.”
17* Says Jehovah of Armies, Call the threnodists to come, send to the wise women 18* to hurry up, and to raise a lament over us and have our eyes run tears and our eyelashes drip water; 19** for a sound of lament is heard out of Sion “How we are made havoc of! we are in utter shame because we have left his country, because we have disclaimed our abodes.” 20 For hear Jehovah’s word, women, and let your ears receive the word of his mouth, and teach lamentation to your daughters and threnody to each other. 21** For death has got up to our windows, got into our palaces, destroying child at play from street, young men from squares. 22* And human carcasses will drop like dung dropped on the range and like swaths dropping behind the reaper without anyone to pick them up.
23 Says Jehovah, Let a wise man not boast of his wisdom nor a champion of his prowess; let a rich man not boast of his wealth; 24 but let the one who boasts boast of this, canny dealing and knowing me that I Jehovah do the friendly and right and fair thing in the earth, because in these things I take pleasure, quoth Jehovah.
25* Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when I will punish everybody who is circumcised with a foreskin: 26 Egypt and Judah and Edom and the Bene-ʽAmmon and Moab and all the wilderness-dwellers that are clipped at the side; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel have uncircumcised hearts.
10 Listen to Jehovah’s word which he has spoken about you, house of Israel. 2* Says Jehovah, Do not learn the way of the nations nor be apprehensive of the signs of the sky because the nations are apprehensive of them; 3* for the usages of the nations are superstition. A piece of wood that he has cut from a badlands growth, the handicraft of a mechanic with a hatchet; 4 he beautifies it with silver and gold. They make them fast with hammer and nails, not to totter. 5* They are like scarecrows, do not speak, have to be carried because they cannot walk; do not be afraid of them, for they do no harm, neither is it in them to do good. 6 —— 7 —— 8 —— 9 Silver-leaf brought from Spain and gold from Uphaz, work of a mechanic and a smelter’s hands, violet and purple, is their dress; they are all artists’ work. 10 But our God is truth; he is living God and eternal King; at his wrath the earth quakes, and nations do not hold out under his hostility.
11* Thus you are to say to them: The gods that did not make the sky and the earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under the sky.
12 He who made the earth by his power, set the world firm by his wisdom, and stretched the sky by his insight, 13* when he collects a drift of water in the sky and brings up vapors from earth’s end, makes lightnings for the rain and brings wind out of his storehouses. 14 All mankind is too stupid to know; every smelter is too ashamed for a statue, for his castings are counterfeit, they have no spirit in them. 15* They are nothings, a joke; at their time of punishment they perish. 16* Not like these is Jacob’s portion; for the Shaper of all is his inheritance, his name is Jehovah.
17* Get in your wares from outside, dame of Bahurim; 18* for Jehovah says “Here this time I am slinging away the inhabitants of the country and bringing them into distress in order that they may find.”
19* Woe is me for my broken bones! my wound is gangrened; and I thought “This must be an illness that I am to bear.” 20* My home is wrecked and all my tent-ropes broken; my children have gone out on me and are nowhere, there is no longer anyone to spread my roof and set up my tent-walls. 21 For the shepherds were stupid and did not inquire of Jehovah, therefore they did not manage right and their animals scattered. 22 Hark, here comes news, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a retreat of jackals.
23 I know, Jehovah, that man’s course does not belong to him; walking and placing his step does not belong to any man. 24 Discipline me only as is due, Jehovah; not in anger, for fear you should cut me down to littleness. 25* Pour out your ire on the nations that do not know you and on kingdoms that have not called on your name; for they have eaten Jacob up and cleaned him out, and desolated his ground.
11 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, 2 “Listen to the terms of this covenant and state them to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 3 say to them ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Cursed is the man who does not listen to the terms of this covenant 4* which I enjoined on your fathers on the day that I brought them out of Egypt, out of the blast-furnace, saying “Obey me and do just as I command you, and I will have you for my people and you shall have me for your God, 5 so as to make good the oath I swore to your fathers to give you a country that runs milk and honey as you have it this day.”’” And I said “Amen, Jehovah.”
6 And Jehovah said to me “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and live up to them. 7 For I admonished your fathers on the day I brought them out of Egypt and down to this day, admonishing them early each time, “Obey me.” 8 But they did not listen nor turn their ears, but each walked in his willful wicked way, and I brought down on them all the terms of this covenant which I had commanded should be lived up to and they did not live up to them.’”
9 And Jehovah said to me “The men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are detected in treason: 10 they have gone back to the offenses of their first fathers who refused to listen to my words, and have themselves gone after other gods to worship them; the house of Israel and the house of Jacob have broken my covenant that I made with their fathers. 11 Therefore Jehovah says, Here I am bringing to them a calamity that they will not be able to get out of, and they will cry to me and I will not listen to them; 12 and the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry to the gods they are making burnings to, but save them in their time of calamity they will not. 13 For your gods are as many as your cities, Judah, and to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to the shame, altars to make burnings to the Baal.
14* “But for your part do not pray for this people, nor put up appeal and prayer for them, for I am not going to listen at the time when they call to me in their time of calamity. 15*** What business has my darling in my house, that has done malignantly? will cuts of fat and sacred flesh take your calamity off you? then you might jubilate. 16 Jehovah has named you Stately Verdant Olive-Tree; with the sound of a great driving storm he has kindled a fire against her, and her branches burn. 17 And Jehovah of Armies, who planted you, has denounced mischief against you on account of the mischiefs of the house of Israel and the house of Judah that they have been doing, provoking me, making burnings to the Baal.”
18 And Jehovah enlightened me so that I knew; then I saw their practices. 19* And I was like a cosset sheep being taken to slaughtering, and had not known that they had laid plans against me, “let us throw wood into his bread and annihilate him out of the world of living men, and his name not be remembered again.” 20 But Jehovah of Armies is an honest judge, a prober of heart and brain; I shall see your vengeance on them, because I have left my quarrel to you.
21 So Jehovah says of the men of Anathoth who are looking for your life, saying “You shall not prophesy in Jehovah’s name, so as not to die by our hands,” 22 —so Jehovah of Armies says, Here, I am punishing them: the young men shall die by the sword, the children shall die by starvation, 23 and there shall be no remnant of them; for I will bring mischief upon the men of Anathoth, their year of punishment.
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.
13 Said Jehovah to me “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth and place it on your waist, but do not put it in water”; 2 and I bought the loincloth in accordance with Jehovah’s word and placed it on my waist. 3 And Jehovah’s word came to me 4 “Take the loincloth you bought, that you have on your waist, and go off to the Euphrates and bury it there in a fissure of the crag”; 5 and I went and buried it at the Euphrates as Jehovah had ordered me to. 6 And after a long time Jehovah said to me “Go off to the Euphrates and get from there the loincloth I ordered you to bury there”; 7 and I went to the Euphrates and dug and got the loincloth from the place where I had buried it, and I found the loincloth was ruined, would not do for anything.
8 And Jehovah’s word came to me “Says Jehovah, 9* Like that I will ruin the great pride of Judah and of Jerusalem. 10 This wicked people who refuse to listen to my words, who go their own willful way and follow other gods, worshiping them and doing reverence to them, shall be like this loincloth that will not do for anything. 11* For as the loincloth is made fast to a man’s waist, so I made all the house of Judah fast to myself, quoth Jehovah, to be my own people and my fame and praise and glory, but they did not listen. 12* And you shall say to this people ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Every cask will be filled with wine’; and they will say to you ‘Don’t we know every cask will be filled with wine?’ 13** and you shall say to them ‘Says Jehovah, Here I am filling all the inhabitants of this country, the kings that David has sitting on his throne and the priests and the prophets and Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness; 14 and I will smash them brother against brother and the fathers and the sons together, quoth Jehovah, I will not spare nor have mercy nor have feeling against making away with them.’”
15 Hear and take in, do not be haughty, because Jehovah has spoken. 16 Give glory to your God Jehovah before it has grown dark and before your feet have stumbled on the twilighty mountains and you have hoped for light and he has rendered it gloom and made darkling mist. 17* And if you do not hear, my soul will weep in concealment over its sorrow, and my eyes dissolve into tears because Jehovah’s flock is carried off. 18 Say to the king and the queen-mother “Sit low, because your crowns of magnificence are down off your heads.” 19 The cities of the South are shut up and there is nobody to open; Judah is all deported, deported bodily.
20 Raise your eyes and see those who are coming from the north; where is the flock you had given to you, the flock that was your glory? 21* What will you say when he sets over you—and you yourself had taught them against you—intimates as heads? Will not pains like those of a childbearing woman seize you? 22 And whereas you say to yourself “How comes it these things have befallen me?” it is for the multiplicity of your guilt your skirts are turned up and your heels treated roughly. 23 Will a Negro turn his skin, a leopard its spots? just as much can you do good things, wonted to doing bad. 24 And I will scatter them like straw passing on a wilderness wind. 25 This is your lot, your award for disobeying me, quoth Jehovah; for your having forgotten me and put your confidence in falsities, 26 I on my part will pull your skirts up over your face and your ignominy shall be seen. Your adulteries and indecencies, 27** the lewdness of your unchastity on hills in the open country—I have seen your disgusting ways. Woe to you, Jerusalem! you will not be clean in nobody knows how long!
14 Jehovah’s word that came to Jeremiah in the matter of the hard times.
2 Judah is mourning and its gates are forlorn; they are in black on the ground, and Jerusalem’s clamor has gone up; 3* and their grandees have sent their underlings for water; they came to trenches, did not find water, went back with their buckets empty, were ashamed and humiliated and muffled their heads; 4* and the tillers of the soil are dismayed because there have been no showers in the country; plowmen are ashamed, muffle their heads. 5* For even a doe out on the range gives birth and leaves its offspring because no vegetation has come; 6 and wild asses stand on scalps panting for wind like jackals; their eyes break down because there is no herbage.
7* If our guilt does testify against us, Jehovah, act for us for your own sake; because our apostasies have been many, before you we have sinned. 8 Hope of Israel, his savior in time of distress, why should you be like an immigrant in the country, like a traveler who has turned off to spend the night? 9* Why should you be like a man in a trance, like a champion unable to bring victory? and you are among us, Jehovah, and we wear your name; do not lay us down.
10 Says Jehovah for this people “They have loved to tramp about so, they have put no restraint on their feet; and Jehovah has not accepted them—now he will remember their guilt and punish their sins.” 11 And Jehovah said to me “Do not pray for this people for good; 12 when they fast I am not listening to their appeal, and when they offer burnt-offering and grain-offering I am not accepting them; for with warfare and starvation and epidemics I am going to bring them to their finish.” 13 And I said “O, O, Lord Jehovah, here are the prophets saying to them ‘You shall not see warfare nor have starvation, for I will give sure safety in this place.’” 14* And Jehovah said to me “The prophets are prophesying falsely in my name; I did not send them nor commission them nor speak to them; it is false vision and trumpery soothsaying and the humbug of their own heads that they are prophesying to you. 15 So Jehovah says of the prophets that prophesy in my name when I have not sent them, and are saying ‘There shall not be warfare nor starvation in this country,’ By warfare and starvation those prophets shall all go; 16* and the people to whom they are prophesying shall be thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem in consequence of starvation and warfare and have nobody to bury them, they, their wives, and their children; and I will pour their wickedness upon them. 17** And you shall say to them this word: ‘Let my eyes dissolve in tears night and day and not be still, because the maiden daughter of my people is maimed with a great breaking of bones, a very desperate wound. 18 If I go out on the range I find men cut down in warfare, and if I go into the city I find the blight of starvation; for the very priest and prophet have fared to a country they did not know.’”
19 Have you actually repudiated Judah, or have you taken an aversion to Sion? how comes it you have struck us and there is no healing for us? we look for things to be all right, and there is nothing good; for a time of healing, and we find dissolution. 20 We know our wickedness, Jehovah, our fathers’ guilt, because we have sinned against you. 21 Do not be contemptuous, for the sake of your name; do not hold your throne of glory cheap; remember, do not break your covenant with us. 22 Are there rain-senders among the nothings of heathen superstition, or will the sky give showers? are not you the one, Jehovah our God? and we hope in you, because you made all these things.
15* And Jehovah said to me “If Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, I care nothing about this people; send them out of my way and have them go out. 2 And when they say to you ‘Out where?’ say to them ‘Says Jehovah, The one that is for death for death, and the one that is for the sword for the sword, and the one that is for starvation for starvation, and the one that is for foreign slavery to foreign slavery.’ 3 And I will appoint over them four sorts, quoth Jehovah, the sword to kill and the dogs to drag about and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to eat and mangle; 4 and I will give them as victims to all kingdoms on earth, on account of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for all that he did in Jerusalem. 5 For who is to pity you, Jerusalem, who to lament your lot? and who to turn off to ask how you do? 6 You had abandoned me, quoth Jehovah, you were backing away; and I stretched out my hand against you and made away with you; I was tired of changing my mind. 7** And I winnowed you with a winnowing-fork in the gates of the cities of the country; I bereaved, destroyed my people because of their misdeeds; 8 I have let their widows be more multitudinous than the sands; I have brought them to such a pass that a marauder comes at noonday upon a young man’s mother; I have let fall upon them suddenly agony and heart-failure. 9* She who has given birth to seven is forlorn, her life has gone out of her; her sun has set while yet it was day, she is put to shame and abashed. And the remnant of them I will give to the sword before their enemies.”
10 Woe is me, mother, that you brought me forth to be a man of dispute and quarreling for all the earth! I have not made loans nor taken loans; everybody curses me. 11** Amen, Jehovah, if I have not wrested you for good, if I have not interposed with you in time of disaster and of distress toward the enemy. 12* Will one break iron, northern iron, and bronze? 13 —— 14 —— 15 You know! Jehovah, remember me and attend to my case, and take vengeance on my persecutors for me, not with patience; recognize how I have borne taunts on your account from those who despise your words. 16 Make an end of them, that your word may become to me a rejoicing and a gladness because I wear your name, Jehovah of Armies. 17 I did not sit in a circle of jokers and rollick; because of your hand I sat by myself, because you had filled me with antagonism. 18 Why is my pain permanent and my wound stubbornly incurable? you are becoming to me like a disappointing water, a water that is not to be depended on.
19 So Jehovah says “If you come back and I bring you back, you shall stand in my service; and if you pick out precious material from cheap, you shall be like my mouth: they shall come round to you and not you to them. 20 And I will give you to this people as a fortified bronze wall which they shall attack but not master, because I am with you to save you and rescue you, quoth Jehovah, 21 and will rescue you out of bad men’s hands and ransom you out of overbearing men’s grasp.”
16 And Jehovah’s word came to me 2 “You are not to take a wife nor have children in this place; 3 for Jehovah has said of the children that are born in this place and of their mothers that give them birth and of their fathers that have them born in this place, 4 They will die woeful deaths, will not be bewailed nor buried, will be just dung lying over the soil, and will come to an end by warfare and starvation, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.
5 “For Jehovah says, Do not go into a house where there is a wake, nor go to wail, nor lament over them; for I am withdrawing my goodwill from this people, quoth Jehovah, withdrawing friendship and sympathy, 6 and great and small shall die in the country without being buried, and they will not bewail them nor hack themselves nor go bald for them, 7* nor break bread to a mourner to comfort him for a death, nor hand him a comfort-cup for his father or his mother. 8 And do not go into a house where there is a banquet to sit with them to eat and drink. 9 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, Here I am going to abolish out of this place before your eyes and in your days the voice of rejoicing and of merrymaking, the voice of bridegroom and of bride.
10 “And when you tell this people all these things and they say to you ‘On what account has Jehovah denounced all this disaster against us? and what is our guilt, and what our sin, that we have committed against our God Jehovah?’ 11 you shall say to them ‘On account of your fathers’ having left me, quoth Jehovah, and followed other gods and worshiped them and done reverence to them, while me they left and my instructions they did not observe, 12 and your having done worse than your fathers: here you are each following his own wicked willful heart, not listening to me. 13 And I will hurl you off from this country to a country you and your fathers have never known, and there you will worship other gods day and night, as I will give you no grace. 14 So here come days, quoth Jehovah, that they will no longer say “By Jehovah who brought the sons of Israel up out of Egypt” 15 but “By Jehovah who brought the sons of Israel up out of the northern country and out of all the countries into which he had banished them and brought them back onto the soil he had given to their fathers.” 16 Here I am sending for many fishermen, quoth Jehovah, and they shall fish them out; and after that I will send for many hunters and they shall hunt them out off every mountain and off every hill and out of the fissures of the crags. 17 For my eyes are on all their courses, they are not screened from before me, and their guilt is not concealed from under my eyes. 18 And I will first repay double their guilt and sin, for their having profaned my country with the carcasses of their disgusting idols and filled my estate with their abominations.’”
19 Jehovah, my strength and stronghold and my refuge on a day of distress, to you nations will come from the ends of the earth and say “Our fathers inherited mere falsehood, superstitions, and things of no use.” 20 Is a man to make himself gods, when they are not gods? 21 So here this time I am going to let them know, to let them know my hand and my energy; and they shall know that my name is Jehovah.
17 Judah’s sin is written with iron pen, engraved with diamond-tipped scraper, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars, 2 as their sons remember their altars and asherahs by verdant trees on high hills, 3 mountains of the countryside. Your means and your reserve I will give for plunder in payment for all your sins throughout your territory, 4* and you shall forgo your good things out of your estate that I gave you, and I will enslave you to your enemies in a country you do not know; for you have lighted a fire in my nostrils that will burn forever.
5* Says Jehovah, Cursed is the man that trusts to mankind and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from Jehovah; 6 and he will be like a savin-bush in the desert that does not see when good comes, but occupies parched stretches of wilderness, uninhabited alkali country. 7 Blessed is the man that trusts to Jehovah and has Jehovah for his reliance; 8* and he will be like a tree set out by water and sending its roots along a stream, that does not see when heat comes, but its leaves are verdant, and in a year of shortage it feels no anxiety and does not desist from producing fruit.
9* The heart is trickier than anything and in a desperate state; who understands it? 10 I Jehovah examine brains and test hearts, to give to each man what corresponds to his courses and to the fruit of his practices.
11** One who makes a fortune without a right is a partridge, that has called young together without being their mother; in the middle of his days it will leave him, and in his latter days he will be glum.
12 A throne of glory, lofty from the first, is the place of our sanctuary. 13* Hope of Israel, Jehovah, all that leave you will be put to shame and those who turn aside from your well will come to humiliation, because they have left a fount of living water, Jehovah.
14 Heal me, Jehovah, that I may be healed; save me, that I may be saved; for you are my praise. 15 Here they are saying to me “Where is Jehovah’s word? let it come true,” 16* and I have not been pressing you for disaster, and have not desired a hopeless day, you know; what came out of my lips was to your face. 17* Do not expose me to dismay, you my shelter in a day of distress. 18 Let my persecutors be put to shame, and not me; let them and not me be dismayed. Bring upon them a day of disaster, and break them in double breaking.
19* Said Jehovah to me, Go and stand in the Benjamin gate by which the kings of Judah go in and go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, 20 and say to them “Hear Jehovah’s word, kings of Judah and all Judah and all inhabitants of Jerusalem that come in at these gates: 21 Says Jehovah, Look out for your lives and do not carry a load on the sabbath day and bring it in at the gates of Jerusalem; 22 and you shall not take a load out of your houses on the sabbath day, nor do any work, but keep the sabbath day sacred as I commanded your fathers— 23 but they did not listen nor turn their ears, but stiffened up their necks, not listening and not taking a lesson. 24 And if you do listen to me, quoth Jehovah, not bringing a load in at the gates of this city on the sabbath day, not doing any work on it, 25 there will come in at the gates of this city kings and generals who sit on David’s throne, who ride with chariots and ponies, they and their generals, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever; 26 and they will come from the cities of Judah and from the environs of Jerusalem and from the country of Benjamin and from the lowland and from the highland and from the South, bringing burnt-offering and sacrifice and grain-offering and frankincense, and bringers of thank-offering to Jehovah’s house. 27 But if you do not listen to me, keeping the sabbath day sacred and not taking up a load and coming into the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, I will set a fire in its gates and it will eat up the palaces of Jerusalem and will not die down.”
18 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, 2 “Up, go down to the potter’s and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 And I went down to the potter’s and found him doing work on the wheel; 4 and when the dish he was making went wrong in the potter’s hands he reworked it into another dish such as it suited the potter to make.
5 And Jehovah’s word came to me 6 “Cannot I do with you as this potter does, house of Israel? Here you are in my hands just like the potter’s clay: 7* now I threaten to uproot and pull down and destroy a nation and a kingdom, 8 and that nation turns back from its wickedness and I change my mind about the harm I planned to do to it, 9* and now I promise to build and plant a nation and a kingdom, 10 and it does what displeases me, not obeying me, and I change my mind about the good that I thought of doing to it.
11 “Now then, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem ‘Says Jehovah, Here I am working up a harm against you and forming a plan against you. Come back from your bad courses each of you and reform your courses and practices.’ 12 But they will say ‘Not we: we will follow our own plans and each do his willful wicked way.’
13 “So Jehovah says, Ask among the nations who has seen the like of this: maid Israel had done a very horrible thing. 14** Does one quit the Lebanon snow out of field rocks, or are cool trickling far-coming waters abandoned, 15* that my people have forgotten me, are making burnings to futilities, and stumble out of their courses, the old-time trails, to go the paths of an unmade road; 16* to make their country a desolation, a thing to whistle at forever, at which everyone who passes it will stand aghast and shake his head? 17* Like an east wind I will scatter them before an enemy; I will show them my back and not my face on their day of calamity.”
18 And they said “Come and let us lay a plan against Jeremiah, because a priest will never be without his rulings nor a wise man without his policy nor a prophet without his word. Come and let us strike him down with our tongues and not listen to all his talk.” 19 Listen to me, Jehovah, and hear the voices of my antagonists. 20 Is evil to be repaid for good, that they have dug a pitfall for my life? Remember my standing before you to speak good for them, to turn back your ire from them. 21* So give their sons to starvation and lay them low by the sword; let their women be childless and widowed and their men be killed off with pestilence and their youths struck down with the sword in battle. 22 Let a shriek be heard from their houses when raiders come upon them suddenly, because they dug a pitfall to catch me and buried traps for my feet. 23* But you, Jehovah, know their purpose against me for death; do not purge their guilt and let their sin never be wiped out from before you; let them be made to stumble before you, and deal with them at the time of your anger.
19 Then Jehovah said to me “Go and buy an earthen bottle, and have elders of the people and of the priests come, 2 and go out to Ben-Hinnom’s Valley, at the rubbish gate, and proclaim there the words I will tell you, 3 and say ‘Hear Jehovah’s word, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; says Israel’s God Jehovah, Here I am bringing upon this place such a disaster that when anybody hears of it his ears will buzz. 4* Since they have left me and denatured this place and made burnings in it to other gods whom they and their fathers had never known, and the kings of Judah have filled this place with blood 5 and have built the Baal-heights to burn up their children as burnt-offerings to the Baal, which I had not commanded nor spoken of nor thought of, 6 therefore here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when this place will no longer be called “the Fire-Pit” and “Ben-Hinnom’s Valley” but “Slaughter Valley”; 7 and I will frustrate the policy of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and have them fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of those who are after their lives, and I will give their carcasses for food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, 8* and will make this city a desolation and a thing to whistle at; everyone who passes it will stand aghast and whistle at all its overthrow. 9 And I will feed them their children’s flesh, and each other’s flesh they shall eat, in the hard-pressed siege with which their enemies press them’; 10 and break the bottle before the eyes of the men that came with you, 11 and say to them ‘Says Jehovah of Armies, Like this I will break this people and this city as one breaks an earthen dish, so that it cannot be mended again. 12 So I will do to this place, quoth Jehovah, and to its inhabitants, and be making this city like a fire-pit; 13 and the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be like the place of the fire-pit, defiled, all the houses on whose roofs they made burnings to all the legions of the sky and poured libations to other gods.”’
14 And Jeremiah came from the Fire-Pit, where Jehovah had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of Jehovah’s house and said to the people 15 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Here I am bringing to this city and to all its cities and villages all the disaster I have threatened it with, because they stiffened their necks, not listening to my words:”
20 And Priest Pashhur the son of Immer, he being chief commissioner in Jehovah’s house, heard Jeremiah uttering these prophecies, 2 and he beat the prophet Jeremiah and put him in the stocks at the upper Benjamin gate in Jehovah’s house. 3 And next day Pashhur took Jeremiah out of the stocks, and Jeremiah said to him “Jehovah does not call you Pashhur but Terror. 4 For Jehovah says, Here I am making you a terror to yourself and to all who love you, and they will fall by their enemies’ swords, your eyes seeing it; and I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will deport them to Babylon and strike them down with swords. 5 And I will give all the capital of this city and all its acquisitions and all its treasures and all the hoards of the kings of Judah into the hands of their enemies, and they will plunder them, and take them and bring them to Babylon. 6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, will go into foreign slavery; and you will come to Babylon and die there and be buried there, and all who love you, to whom you have prophesied falsely.”
7 You inveigled me, Jehovah, and I let myself be inveigled; you were too strong for me and had your way; I have come to be a laugh all day, everybody makes fun of me. 8* For as often as I speak I make outcry; I call out about outrage and violence; for Jehovah’s word has become an all-day slur and gibe for me. 9 And I say “I will not mention him, nor speak again in his name”—and there is in my heart the like of a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I get worn out with holding in and cannot do it. 10 For I have heard the gossip of many, terror on every side, “tell it, so we can tell”; all the men that are on good terms with me are watching for my breaking down, “maybe he will have a delusion and we shall master him and take our revenge on him.” 11 But Jehovah is with me like an overbearing champion; therefore my pursuers will stumble and not succeed; they are utterly put to shame, because they have not come through well, with perpetual unforgettable humiliation. 12 But Jehovah of Armies is an honest prober, he sees heart and brain; I shall see your vengeance on them because I have left my quarrel to you. 13 Sing to Jehovah, praise Jehovah, because he has delivered a needy man’s life from the hands of evil-doers.
14 Cursed be the day I was born on! be the day that my mother bore me not blessed! 15 Cursed be the man that brought my father good news, “you have a son born, a male,” making him glad indeed! 16** And be that man like the cities Jehovah overthrew without remorse; and may he hear an outcry in the morning and yells at noontime, 17* that he did not dispatch me at birth, and my mother would have been my grave and her womb permanently pregnant. 18 What did I come out of a womb for, to see toil and trouble and have my days worn out in shame?
21 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah when King Sidkijah sent to him Pashhur the son of Malkijah and Priest Sephaniah the son of Maʽasejah to say 2** “Inquire of Jehovah on our behalf, because the king of Babylon is making war on us: perhaps Jehovah will do with us the like of all his wonders, and he will break off his attack”; 3 and Jeremiah said to them “This is what you are to say to Sidkijah: 4 ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Here I am going to turn round the weapons you have in your hands, with which you are fighting the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans that are besieging you outside the wall, and get them in inside the city; 5 and I myself will fight you with outstretched hand and strong arm and with anger and choler and great wrath; 6 and I will strike the inhabitants of this city, man and beast, with a great pestilence, and they will die. 7* And after that, quoth Jehovah, I will give King Sidkijah of Judah and his officers and the people that are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the starvation, into the hands of their enemies who are after their lives, and they will massacre them; I will have no mercy nor tender feelings.’
8 “And to this people you are to say ‘Says Jehovah, Here I am putting before you the road to life and the road to death. 9* He who stays in this city will die by the sword and by starvation and by pestilence; and he who goes out to the Chaldeans that are besieging you will live, and have his life for booty; 10 for I have fixed my face on this city for harm and not for good, quoth Jehovah; into the hands of the king of Babylon it will be given, and he will burn it down.’
11 “And for the family of the king of Judah: Listen to Jehovah’s word. 12* House of David, Jehovah says ‘Give just verdicts morning by morning, and take stolen goods out of a rapacious man’s hands, for fear my choler should start out like a fire and burn unquenchably.’ 13* Have at you, inhabitant of the vale, rock of the plain, quoth Jehovah! you who say ‘Who will come down on us?’ and ‘Who will get into our coverts?’ 14* but I will light a fire in her bush and it shall devour on all sides of her.”
22 Said Jehovah, “Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there: 2 say ‘Hear Jehovah’s word, king of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne! you and your officers and your people, that come in at these gates! 3 Says Jehovah, Do lawfully and honestly, and take stolen goods out of a rapacious man’s hands, and do not ill-treat immigrant, orphan, and widow, do not violate their rights, and do not shed innocent blood in this place; 4* for if you shall do this thing, there shall come in at the gates of this house kings that David has sitting on his throne, riding chariots and ponies, they and their officers and their people; 5 but if you do not listen to these words, by myself I swear, quoth Jehovah, that this house shall become a ruin. 6* For Jehovah says of the house of the king of Judah “You are to me Gilead, the peak of Lebanon; depend upon it, I will render you a wilderness, an uninhabited nakedness, 7* and set ravagers at you, each with his tools, who will cut your choicest cedars and bring them down for fire. 8 And many nations will pass this city and say to each other ‘What did Jehovah do like that to this great city for?’ 9 and they will say ‘For their having quitted their God Jehovah’s covenant and done reverence to other gods and worshiped them.’”’”
10 Do not weep for him who is dead nor lament his lot; do weep for him who has gone, because he will never come back nor see his native city. 11 For Jehovah says to Shallum the son of Josiah, the successor of his father Josiah, who has gone out from this place, he will never come back to it, 12 but in the place they deported him to he will die, and never see this country again.
13 Ha, you who build your house unrightfully and your roof apartments unlawfully, using a fellowman’s work gratis and not giving him his pay; 14* you who say “I will build myself a large-sized house and spacious roof apartments” and cut yourself windows and put in cedar wainscoting and paint with vermilion! 15 Are you being king because you try for a record in cedar? Your father ate and drank and did the lawful and right thing, did he not? then he had a good time; 16 he gave verdicts for the downtrodden and needy; then it was all right; is not that what knowing me is? quoth Jehovah. 17 But your eyes and heart are on nothing but your revenue, and innocent blood to be shed, and persecution and denial of justice to be perpetrated. 18** So Jehovah says to Jehojakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, Woe to this man! they will not wail for him “Ah, brother! ah, sister!” they will not weep “Ah, lord! ah, the majesty of him!” 19 he will be given a donkey’s burial, dragged off and thrown away beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
20 Go up on the Lebanon and cry out, raise your voice on the Bashan, cry out from the eastern highlands, because all your lovers are broken. 21 I spoke to you in your prosperity, you said “I will not hear”; this has been your way since your girlhood, you have not obeyed me. 22* All your friends the wind will shepherd, and your lovers will go into foreign slavery; then you will be ashamed and humiliated at all your wickedness. 23 You that were living in the Lebanon, nested in the cedars, how you moan when birth-pains come to you, pangs like those of a woman in labor!
24 As I live, quoth Jehovah, if Coniah the son of Jehojakim were a signet-ring on my right hand, I would tear you off 25 and give you into the hands of those who are after your life and of those before whom you quail, into the hands of the Chaldeans, 26 and pitch you and your mother that gave you birth into another country where you were not born, and there you shall die. 27 And back to the country they count on coming back to they shall never come. 28 Is this man Coniah valueless damaged goods or an undesirable article? how comes it he and his issue are pitched out and thrown away to the country they did not know? 29 Land, land, land, hear Jehovah’s word. 30 Says Jehovah, Set this man down childless of manly issue; for of his issue there will not be a successful man sitting on David’s throne and ruling again in Judah.
23 Ha, shepherds that lose and scatter the sheep of my estate! quoth Jehovah. 2 So Israel’s God Jehovah says of the shepherds that shepherd my people, You have scattered my sheep and sent them astray and not attended to them. Here I am going to attend to you for the wickedness of your practices, quoth Jehovah, 3 and I myself will gather the remnant of my sheep out of all the countries I have sent them astray to, and will bring them back to their pasture, and they will breed and multiply, 4 and I will set up shepherds over them, who will shepherd them; and they shall not again be afraid or dismayed or missing, quoth Jehovah.
5 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will bring up a new growth of David coming right, and a king will reign and reign well, and do justice and right in the country. 6 In his time Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in security; and this is the name he will be called by, Jehovah-is-Our-Rightness.
7 So here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that they will no longer say “by Jehovah who brought up the sons of Israel out of Egypt” 8 but “by Jehovah who brought the stock of the house of Israel up and in out of the north country and out of all the countries he had sent them astray to,” and they shall live on their own soil.
9** For the prophets. My heart is broken up within me; all my joints are unstrung; I have been like a drunken man and like a man wine has come over, because of Jehovah and his holy words. 10 For the country is full of adulterers; for because of these the land is mourning, wilderness pastures are dried out, and their activities are harmful and their energies misdirected. 11 For both prophet and priest have grown irreligious; in my very house I find their wickedness, quoth Jehovah. 12 So their road will be to them like slippery places in murky darkness, they will bump and fall in it; for I will bring disaster upon them, the year of their punishment, quoth Jehovah.
13 And in Samaria’s prophets I have seen unsoundness: they prophesied by the Baal and misled my people Israel. 14* And in Jerusalem’s prophets I have seen horrors: adultery and habitual falsehood, and encouraging evil-doers so that they should not turn back from their wickedness. They have all become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Ghomorrah. 15* So Jehovah says, Here I am going to feed them wormwood and give them drink of poppy-juice, because from Jerusalem’s prophets irreligiousness has come out for all the country.
16 Says Jehovah of Armies, Do not listen to the words of the prophets that prophesy to you: they are running you into superstition; telling visions out of their own heads, not from Jehovah’s mouth. 17 They say to those who treat Jehovah’s word with contempt “You will be all right,” and to everyone who goes his willful way they say “No harm will come to you.” 18 For who has stood in Jehovah’s circle and seen, and heard his word? who has listened for my word and heard it?
19 Here has Jehovah’s tempest-blast come out in ire, a swirling tempest that will light on wicked men’s heads; 20 Jehovah’s anger will not turn back till he has executed and realized the designs of his heart. In the future days you will come to an understanding of it.
21 I had not sent the prophets, and they ran; I had not spoken to them, and they prophesied. 22* And if they did stand in my circle, let them make my people hear my words and turn them back from the wickedness of their practices. 23 Am I a God nearby, quoth Jehovah, and not a God far off? 24 or will a man screen himself in places of concealment and I not see him? Do not I fill the heavens and the earth? quoth Jehovah.
25* I hear what the prophets say that prophesy falsely in my name “I have dreamed, I have dreamed” 26* —how long? Is it in the mind of the prophets, the prophesiers of falsehood and prophets of the humbug of their own hearts, 27 those who plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they recount to each other, as their fathers forgot my name by the Baal? 28 Let the prophet who is in possession of a dream recount his dream, and the one who is in possession of my word speak my word faithfully. What has the straw to do among the grain? quoth Jehovah. 29* Does not my word sear like fire, quoth Jehovah, and break away cliffs like a sledgehammer?
30 So have at the prophets, quoth Jehovah, the stealers of my words from each other! 31 have at the prophets that take their tongues and bring out a “quoth”! 32 have at the prophesiers of false dreams, who have recounted them and misled my people with their falsehoods and their recklessness when I had not sent them nor commissioned them, and do this people good they will not!
33** And when this people or a prophet or a priest asks you “What is Jehovah’s loading?” say to them “You are the loading, and I will drop you, quoth Jehovah. 34 And whatever prophet or priest or people says ‘Jehovah’s loading,’ I will punish that man and his family. 35** You shall say man to man and brother to brother ‘What has Jehovah answered?’ and ‘What has Jehovah spoken?’ 36* and not again mention Jehovah’s loading,’ for each man would have his own word as loading, and you would upset the words of a living God, our God Jehovah of Armies. 37 You shall say to this people ‘What has Jehovah answered?’ and ‘What has Jehovah spoken?’ 38 and if you say ‘Jehovah’s loading,’ therefore Jehovah says, Since you have said this word, Jehovah’s loading,’ and I have sent word to you ‘You are not to say “Jehovah’s loading,”’ 39 therefore here I am and will load myself up with you and drop you and the city I gave you and your fathers out of my way, 40 and will put upon you a perpetual ignominy and a perpetual, never-to-be-forgotten humiliation.”
24 Jehovah showed me something: there were two baskets of figs standing before Jehovah’s temple, after King Nebucadressar of Babylon had deported Jeconiah the son of Jehojakim, the king of Judah, and the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon 2 —the one basket very good figs like the firstfruit figs, and the one basket very bad figs, uneatably bad. 3 And Jehovah said to me “What do you see, Jeremiah?” and I said “Figs: the good figs very good and the bad figs very bad, uneatably bad.”
4 And Jehovah’s word came to me 5 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Like these good figs, so I will note the deportees from Jerusalem, whom I let go from this place to Chaldea, for good, 6 and will fix my eyes on them for good and bring them back to this city and build them up and not tear them down, and plant them and not uproot them. 7 And I will give them a heart to know me as Jehovah, and will have them for my people and they shall have me for their God, because they shall turn back to me with all their hearts.
8 “And like the uneatably bad figs, says Jehovah, so I will make King Sidkijah of Judah and his generals and the remnant of Jerusalem, those that are left in this country and those that are living in Egypt, 9 victims to all kingdoms on earth; a taunt, a byword, a jeer, a curse, in all the places to which I banish them. 10* And I will let loose upon them warfare, starvation, and epidemics till they are gone off the soil I gave them.”
25* The word that came to Jeremiah about all the people of Judah in the year four of Jehojakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (which was the first year of King Nebucadressar of Babylon), 2* which he uttered about the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 3 From the year thirteen of Josiah the son of Amon as king of Judah to this year, these twenty-three years Jehovah’s word has been coming to me and I have been speaking to you, early each time, and you have not been listening; 4* and Jehovah has been sending to you all his servants the prophets, each one early, but you did not listen, nor turn your ears to hear: 5 “Turn back from each man’s bad course and from the viciousness of your practices, and live on the soil Jehovah gave to you and your fathers from age to age; 6** and do not follow other gods, worshiping them and doing reverence to them, and you will not provoke me by the work of your hands and I will not do you harm,” 7* but you did not listen to me, quoth Jehovah, so as to provoke me by the work of your hands for your own harm.
8 So Jehovah of Armies says, Inasmuch as you did not listen to my words, 9** here I am going to send and take all the clans of the north, and bring them against this country and its inhabitants and against all the nations all around, and destroy them without quarter and make them a desolation and a thing to whistle at and perpetual wastes, 10 and destroy out of them the voice of rejoicing and of merrymaking, the voice of bridegroom and of bride, sound of quern and light of lamp; 11* and all the country shall become a desolation, and they shall be in slavery among the nations seventy years. 12* And when seventy years are full I will punish that nation and make it a perpetual desolation, 13* and will bring upon that country all my words that I have spoken about it, all that is written in this book, all that Jeremiah prophesied about all the nations. 14 ——
15* For Israel’s God Jehovah said to me “Take this cup of wine from my hand and give drinks from it to all the nations I am sending you to; 16 and they shall drink and reel and go wild at the warfare that I am sending between them.” 17 And I took the cup from Jehovah’s hand and gave drinks to all the nations Jehovah had sent me to: 18 Jerusalem and the cities of Judah and its kings and generals, to give them for a waste, a desolation, a thing to whistle at; 19 the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and his officials and generals and all his people 20* and all the foreign-born population; and all the kings of the Philistine country, Ashkelon and Ghaza and ʽEkron and the remnant of Ashdod; 21 Edom and Moab and the Bene-ʽAmmon; 22 and all the kings of Tyre and all the kings of Sidon and the kings of the coast beyond the sea; 23 and Dedan and Tema and Buz and all that are clipped at the side 24* and all the Arabs, that dwell in the wilderness; 25* and all the kings of ‘Elam and all the kings of Media; 26** and all the kings of the North, those that are near and those that are far from each other; and all the kingdoms in the world over the earth’s surface.
27 “And say to them ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Drink and grow tipsy and vomit and fall down, and you shall not get up for the warfare I am sending between you.’ 28 And when they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, say to them ‘Says Jehovah of Armies, Drink you shall! 29 for here I am beginning with the city that wears my name when I begin to do harm, and are you to go free? you will not, for I am calling warfare upon all the inhabitants of the earth.’
30* “And prophesy to them yourself these words, and say to them ‘Jehovah will roar from on high, and make his voice heard out of his holy dwelling; over his home roar he will, with a huzzah like grape-treaders’ he will answer all the inhabitants of the earth. 31 A crashing reaches to the edge of the earth; for Jehovah has a case against the nations, he is putting all mortals on trial; the guilty are to be given to the sword, quoth Jehovah.
32 “‘Says Jehovah of Armies, Here is harm going out from nation to nation, and a great tempest bursts forth from the furthest recesses of earth; 33 and Jehovah’s killed will be from end to end of the earth on that day, unbewailed and un-taken-up and unburied; they will be just dung lying over the soil. 34* Howl, shepherds, and cry out, and daub yourselves, sheepmasters, for it is full time for your slaughtering, and I will knock you on the head and you will fall like choice rams. 35 And the shepherds shall lose the power of flight, and the sheepmasters the chance of survival. 36 Hark, the outcry of the shepherds and the howl of the sheepmasters! for Jehovah is ravaging their pasture, 37 and peaceful leas are sunk into silence before Jehovah’s anger. 38* The young lion has left his covert because their country has become a desolation before the ruthless sword and before his anger.’”
26 Early in the reign of Jehojakim the son of Josiah as king of Judah this word came from Jehovah: 2 Says Jehovah, Stand in the court of Jehovah’s house and speak to all the cities of Judah that come in to do reverence in Jehovah’s house all the words I have commanded you to speak to them; do not subtract a word; 3 maybe they will listen and turn back from their wicked courses and I shall repent of the harm I am planning to do to them for the wickedness of their practices. 4 And say to them “Says Jehovah, If you do not listen to me, going by my instructions that I have put before you, 5 listening to the words of my servants the prophets whom I am sending to you, each one early, but you have not listened, 6 I will make this house like Shiloh and make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.”
7 And the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in Jehovah’s house; 8 and when Jeremiah finished speaking all that Jehovah had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people arrested him, saying “You shall die; 9 how came you to prophesy in Jehovah’s name ‘This house shall become like Shiloh and this city shall be laid waste to have no inhabitant’?” and all the people assembled at Jehovah’s house where Jeremiah was. 10 And the generals of Judah heard these things and came up from the king’s house to Jehovah’s and took their seats at Jehovah’s new gate. 11 And the priests and prophets said to the generals and to all the people “It is a case for a sentence of death on this man, because he has prophesied to this city such things as you have heard with your own ears.”
12* And Jeremiah said to all the generals and all the people “Jehovah sent me to prophesy to this house and this city all the things you have heard; 13 now mend your ways and practices and obey your God Jehovah, and Jehovah will repent of the harm he has threatened you with. 14 And as for me, here I am in your hands: do to me as you think best and fittest; 15 only you must know that if you are going to put me to death you make yourselves and this city and its inhabitants responsible for the shedding of innocent blood, because Jehovah did in truth send me to you to utter all these things in your hearing.”
16 And the generals and all the people said to the priests and the prophets “It is no case for a sentence of death on this man, because it was in the name of our God Jehovah that he spoke to us.” 17 And some of the oldest inhabitants stood up and said to all the assembly of the people 18* “Micajah the Morashtite was prophesying in the time of King Hezekiah of Judah, and he said to all the people of Judah ‘Says Jehovah of Armies, Sion shall be plowed for field land, and Jerusalem shall be ruins and the Temple Mount a height of broken rocks and scrub trees.’ 19 Did King Hezekiah of Judah and all Judah put him to death? did they not fear Jehovah and propitiate Jehovah, and Jehovah repented of the harm he threatened them with? but we are going to do a great injury to our own persons.”
20 But there was also a man prophesying in Jehovah’s name, Urijah the son of Shemaʽjah from Kirjath-Jeʽarim, and he prophesied against this city and against this country just the same things as Jeremiah; 21 and King Jehojakim and all his champions and all the generals heard his words, and the king undertook to put him to death, and Urijah heard and was afraid and got away to Egypt. 22* But King Jehojakim sent Elnathan the son of ʽAcbor and some men with him to Egypt, 23* and they took Urijah out of Egypt and brought him to King Jehojakim, and he killed him with the sword and threw his carcass into the foundlings’ graveyard. 24 Only Jeremiah had the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan with him to keep him from being given up to the people to put to death.
27* Early in the reign of Sidkijah the son of Josiah as king of Judah this word came to Jeremiah: 2 Says Jehovah to me, Make oxbows and ties for yourself and put them on your neck, 3 and send them to the king of Edom and to the king of Moab and to the king of the Bene-ʽAmmon and to the king of Tyre and to the king of Sidon by their messengers that come to Jerusalem to King Sidkijah of Judah, 4 and give them a message to their sovereigns, “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, You are to say to your sovereigns 5 ‘I made the earth, man and beast that are on the surface of the earth, by my great power and my outstretched arm, and I give it to whomever I see fit to; 6* and now I myself have given all these countries into the hands of my servant King Nebucadnessar of Babylon, and I have given him the wild beasts too to be his subjects. 7 —— 8 And the nation and kingdom that does not become subject to him, King Nebucadnessar of Babylon, and that which does not put its neck under the king of Babylon’s yoke, that nation I will punish with warfare and starvation and pestilence, quoth Jehovah, till I get them into his hands. 9 And as for you, do not, listen to your prophets and soothsayers and dreamers and fortunetellers that are telling you “You are not to become subject to the king of Babylon”; 10 for they are prophesying falsely to you so as to take you far away from your soil and have me set you adrift, and you be lost. 11 And the nation that does put its neck under the king of Babylon’s yoke and become subject to him I will leave on its soil, quoth Jehovah, and it shall work it and live on it.’”
12* And to King Sidkijah of Judah I said these same things: “Put your neck under the king of Babylon’s yoke and become subject to him, and live; 13 why should you die, you and your people, by warfare and starvation and pestilence, as Jehovah has foretold to the nation that does not become subject to the king of Babylon? 14 And do not listen to the words of the prophets that are saying to you ‘You are not to be subject to the king of Babylon,’ because they are prophesying falsely to you; 15 for I have not sent them, quoth Jehovah, and they are prophesying in my name falsely, so as to have me set you adrift and you be lost, you and the prophets that are prophesying to you.”
16* And I spoke to the priests and all this people, saying “Says Jehovah, Do not listen to the words of your prophets that are prophesying to you ‘Here are the vessels of Jehovah’s house going to be brought back from Babylon,’ because they are prophesying falsely to you; I did not send them. 17 —— 18 If they are prophets and have Jehovah’s word with them, let them intercede with me; 19 for Jehovah says of the pillars and the sea and the bases and the rest of the vessels 20 that the king of Babylon did not take when he deported Jeconiah out of Judah, 21 —— 22 They shall come to Babylon, quoth Jehovah.”
28 In the same year, early in the reign of King Sidkijah of Judah, in the year four, in the fifth month, the prophet Hananiah the son of ʽAzzur from Gibeon said to me before the eyes of the priests and all the people 2 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, I have broken the king of Babylon’s yoke; 3 in two years’ time more I am going to bring back to this place all the vessels of Jehovah’s house that King Nebucadnessar of Babylon took from this place and brought to Babylon; 4 and Jeconiah the son of Jehojakim, king of Judah, and all the deportees of Judah who came to Babylon, I am going to bring back to this place, quoth Jehovah, because I will break the king of Babylon’s yoke.”
5 And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah before the eyes of the priests and of all the people that were standing in Jehovah’s house 6 “Amen; may Jehovah do so; may Jehovah make good your words that you have prophesied, bringing back the vessels of Jehovah’s house and all the deportees from Babylon to this place. 7 Only listen to this word that I am going to speak for you and all the people to hear. 8* The prophets that there were before you and me, in the old times, prophesied about many countries and great kingdoms for war, mischief, and pestilence. 9 The prophet that prophesies for good times—when the prophet’s word comes in, the prophet will be known to have been really sent by Jehovah.”
10 And the prophet Hananiah took the oxbow off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck and smashed it; 11 and Hananiah said before the eyes of all the people “Says Jehovah, Like that I will break King Nebucadnessar of Babylon’s yoke off the necks of all the nations.” And the prophet Jeremiah went his way.
12 But Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah after the prophet Hananiah broke the oxbow off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck, 13 “Go and say to Hananiah ‘Says Jehovah, You have broken wooden bows, but you are to make iron ones instead. 14 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, I have put an iron yoke on the necks of all these nations to be subjects of King Nebucadnessar of Babylon, and his subjects they shall be; and I have given him the wild beasts too.’” 15 And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah “Listen, Hananiah: Jehovah did not send you, and you have been making this people put confidence in a falsehood: 16 so Jehovah says, Here I am sending you off the earth. This year you die, because you have spoken wrongfully against Jehovah.” 17 And the prophet Hananiah died in that year, in the seventh month.
29 And these are the words of the letter the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the deportees and to the priests and the prophets and all the people that Nebucadnessar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon, 2 after King Jeconiah and the queen-mother and the eunuchs and the generals of Judah and Jerusalem and the carpenters and smiths had gone out of Jerusalem, 3 by Eleasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkijah, whom King Sidkijah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebucadnessar of Babylon:
4* Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies to all the deportees whom I have deported from Jerusalem to Babylon, 5 Build houses and live in them and plant gardens and eat their fruit; 6 take wives and have children, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands and let them have children, and multiply and do not dwindle; 7 and strive for the welfare of the country I have deported you to, and pray for it to Jehovah, because in its welfare you will have welfare.
8 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, Do not let your prophets that you have among you, and your soothsayers, delude you, and do not listen to their dreams that they have, 9 because they are prophesying falsely to you in my name; I did not send them, quoth Jehovah. 10 For Jehovah says, As soon as Babylon has had a full seventy years, I will look after you and keep my good word for you, bringing you back to this place. 11* For I know the thoughts I am thinking about you, quoth Jehovah, thoughts of your welfare and not for mischief, to give you a future and a hope. 12* And you shall call me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you, 13 and you shall look for me and find me because you resort to me with all your hearts. 14 And I will let myself be found by you, quoth Jehovah, and will bring you back from captivity and gather you out of all the nations and places to which I have banished you, quoth Jehovah, and bring you back to the place that I deported you from, 15 —because you say “Jehovah has raised up prophets for us at Babylon.”
16 For Jehovah says to the king that is sitting on David’s throne and to all the people that are living in this city, your brothers that did not go out into deportation with you 17 —says Jehovah of Armies, Here I am turning loose on them warfare, starvation, and pestilence, and will make them like horrible figs, uneatably bad, 18 and hunt them down with warfare, starvation, and pestilence, and give them as victims to all the kingdoms of the earth, a thing to be cursed by and to appall and to be whistled at and to be taunted among all the nations where I have banished them, 19 to pay for their not having listened to my words, quoth Jehovah, inasmuch as I sent them my servants the prophets, each one early—and you did not listen, quoth Jehovah.
20 Listen to Jehovah’s word, you, all the deportees that I have sent from Jerusalem to Babylon: 21 says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies to Ahab the son of Kolaiah and to Sidkijah the son of Maʽasejah, who are prophesying falsely to you in my name, Here I am going to give them into the hands of King Nebucadressar of Babylon and he will kill them before your eyes, 22 and all the deportees of Judah in Babylon will use a curse taken from them, “Jehovah make you like Sidkijah and Ahab whom the king of Babylon roasted at a fire,” 23 since they made a scandal in Israel and committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives, and spoke in my name a word which I had not commissioned them to, I knowing it and bearing witness of it, quoth Jehovah.
24 And Shemaʽiah the Nehelamite said 25* “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies” and sent letters in his name to all the people in Jerusalem and to Priest Sephaniah the son of Maʽasejah and to all the priests, 26* “Jehovah has put you in as priest, Priest Jehojadaʽ’s successor, to be commissioner in Jehovah’s house for any man that goes insane and takes to prophesying, and to put him in the stocks and the bilboes. 27 Now why have you not checked Jeremiah the ʽAnathothite who has taken to prophesying to you, 28 seeing that he has sent word to us at Babylon ‘It will be long-lasting; build houses and live in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit’?” 29 And Priest Sephaniah read the letter to the prophet Jeremiah. 30 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah, 31 “Send word to all the deportees, ‘Says Jehovah for Shemaʽiah the Nehelamite, Since Shemaʽiah has been prophesying to you when I had not sent him and making you put confidence in a falsehood, 32 therefore Jehovah says, Here I am going to punish Shema’iah the Nehelamite and his issue: he shall not have a man that will live among this people, and shall not have a sight of the good I am going to do to this people, quoth Jehovah, because he has spoken wrongfully against Jehovah.”’
30 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah, 2 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Write all these words that I have spoken to you in a book. 3* For here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when I will come back to my people Israel and Judah, says Jehovah, and bring them back to the country I gave their fathers, and they shall possess it.” 4 And these are the words Jehovah has spoken of Israel and Judah. 5* For Jehovah says, A sound of panic I hear, terror and unpeace. 6 Ask and see if a male bears a child! how comes it I see every man with his hands on his hips like a childbearing woman, and all faces are turned green? 7 Ha, for that day is great beyond comparison! and it is a time of distress for Jacob, but he shall be saved out of it.
8 And on that day, quoth Jehovah of Armies, I will break his yoke off your neck and snap your tether. And strangers shall no longer exploit them; 9 but they shall serve their God Jehovah and their king David, whom I will raise up for them. 10 And do not you be afraid, my servant Jacob, quoth Jehovah, and do not be dismayed, Israel, because here I am saving you out of distant places and your stock out of the country of their captivity, and Jacob shall come back to living quietly and at ease with nobody to alarm him; 11 for I am with you to save you, quoth Jehovah. For I will make an end among all the nations where I have scattered you, only not make an end of you, but discipline you duly and not let you off.
12 For Jehovah says, Your broken bones are in a desperate state, your wound is gangrened. 13* There is no one to take your part; you have no cure of healing over for the fester. 14* All your lovers have forgotten you; they are not looking you up; for I have dealt you an enemy’s blow, a cruel punishment, for the multiplicity of your guilt, the enormity of your sins. 15 Why do you cry out over your broken bones? your sore is desperate; for the multiplicity of your guilt, the enormity of your sins, I have done these things to you. 16 So all who eat you shall be eaten, and all your foes shall go into slavery, and your pillagers shall be for pillage, and all your plunderers I will give up to plunder. 17 For I will make sound flesh grow up in you, and cure you of your wounds, quoth Jehovah. Because they call you a stray, “she is fair game for us, no one is looking out for her,” 18* Jehovah says “Here I am coming back to Jacob’s tents and will take pity on his lodges; and a city shall be rebuilt on its old site and a palace duly occupied, 19 and out of them will come praise and the voice of merrymakers; and I will multiply them so that they shall not be few and augment them so that they shall not be puny. 20 And his sons shall be as they primitively were, and his community shall be firmly seated before me, and I will punish all his oppressors; 21 and his dominator shall be, one of his own number and his ruler shall come out of his own midst, and I will grant him access and he shall approach me; for who is there that guarantees his courage to approach me? quoth Jehovah.” 22* ——
23 Here has Jehovah’s tempest-blast come out in ire, a swirling tempest that will light on wicked men’s heads; 24 Jehovah’s anger will not turn back till he has executed and realized the designs of his heart. In the future days you will come to an understanding of it.
31* At that time, quoth Jehovah, Israel’s clan shall have me for their God and I will have them for my people. 2* Says Jehovah, A people of survivors from the sword has found favor in the wilderness; Israel walks at ease. 3** Jehovah has appeared to me from afar: “I love you with perpetual love, therefore I stand your friend. 4 I will build you up again, built up you shall be, maid Israel; again you shall dress up with your tambourines and go out in a dance of merrymakers. 5** Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountainsides of Samaria, plant and harvest; 6* for there comes a day when on the highland of Ephraim keepers shall call ‘come on, let us go up to Sion to our God Jehovah.’”
7* For Jehovah says, Shout gladness to Jacob and whoop at the head of the nations; proclaim, praise, and say “Jehovah has saved his people, the remnant of Israel.” 8 Here I am bringing them from the north country and gathering them from the recesses of earth; among them blind man and lame man, pregnant woman and woman giving birth together, a great assembly they shall come back here. 9 In weeping they shall come, and in supplications I will bring them on; I will take them to arroyos of water by a smooth road that they will not stumble on, because I have become father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn son.
10 Listen to Jehovah’s word, nations, and tell it on far-off coasts, and say “He who dispersed Israel will gather them and will guard them as a shepherd does his flock; 11 for Jehovah has redeemed Jacob and recovered him out of the hands of one stronger than he. 12* And they will come and shout on the summit of Sion, and will stream to Jehovah’s good things, to grain and grape-juice and oil and young beasts of flock and herd, and their state will be like a watered garden, and never again shall they despair. 13 Then will maiden in dance make merry, and young men and old together, and I will turn their mourning to rejoicing and comfort them and gladden them out of all their sorrow. 14* And I will refresh the priests’ energies with rich food, and my people shall eat their fill of my good things, quoth Jehovah.”
15 Says Jehovah, A voice is heard at Ramah, lament and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping over her children, refusing to take comfort, because they are gone. 16 Says Jehovah, Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for your work gets its pay, quoth Jehovah, and they will come back from an enemy’s country; 17 and your future has a hope, quoth Jehovah, and sons will come back to their territory. 18 I hear Ephraim making his pathetic appeal, “You disciplined me and I yielded to discipline, like an untrained calf; bring me back and back I will come, for you are my God Jehovah. 19 For after I went back I repented, and after I was given instruction I hit my thigh; I am ashamed and humiliated, because I have borne the disgrace of my youth.” 20 Is Ephraim to me a specially hopeful son or a petted child, that as often as I mention him I keep remembering him? for this reason my bosom is in a turmoil over him; be kind to him I will, quoth Jehovah.
21 Set markers, place guideposts, fix your mind on the highway, the way you went; come back, maid Israel, come back to these cities of yours. 22 How long will you be dodging away, contrary daughter? For Jehovah has created a new thing on earth: a female goes round a man. 23** Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, They shall again say this thing in the country and cities of Judah when I come back to them: “Jehovah bless you, holy ground, sacred highland”; 24* and Judah and all its cities shall be settled in it together, plowmen and men marching off with flocks, 25 because I have refreshed a fainting soul and fed full every soul that was despairing.
26** Upon this I woke and saw; and my sleep had been sweet to me.
27 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with seed of man and seed of cattle; 28 and as I have paid attention to them to uproot and pull down and demolish and destroy and do harm, so I will pay attention to them to build and plant, quoth Jehovah. 29 In those days they shall no longer say “Fathers ate green grapes and children’s teeth are set on edge,” 30 because each shall die for his own guilt; every man that eats the green grapes shall have his teeth set on edge.
31 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah 32 —not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, inasmuch as they broke my covenant and I was estranged from them, quoth Jehovah, 33 for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, quoth Jehovah: I will put my instructions within them and write them on their hearts, and they shall have me for their God and I will have them for my people, 34* and they shall no longer teach each other “Know Jehovah,” because they shall all of them know me from the least to the greatest, quoth Jehovah; for I will forgive their guilt and no longer remember their sin.
35 Says Jehovah who gives a sun for light by day, a system of moon and stars for light by night, who stirs the sea and its waves roar—his name is Jehovah of Armies: 36* If these laws of nature lose their standing before me, quoth Jehovah, so shall Israel’s descendants cease from being always a nation before me. 37 Says Jehovah, If the skies are moved above and earth’s foundations are explored beneath, so will I repudiate also Israel’s descendants for all that they have done, quoth Jehovah.
38 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when the city shall be built up for Jehovah from Hananel’s tower to the corner gate, 39 and the measuring-line shall go straight ahead to Gareb Hill and around to Goʽah; 40* and all the vale, the corpses and the fat-ashes, and all the terraces to the bed of Kidron Arroyo, to the Pony-Gate corner to the east, shall be sacred to Jehovah; it shall not be uprooted or demolished.
32 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah in the year ten of King Sidkijah of Judah, which was the year eighteen of Nebucadressar; 2 the king of Babylon’s forces were then besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the guard in the palace of the king of Judah, 3 King Sidkijah of Judah having shut him up with the words “How is it you are prophesying ‘Says Jehovah, Here I am going to give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon and he shall take it; 4 and King Sidkijah of Judah shall not escape out of the Chaldeans’ hands, but given into the hands of the king of Babylon he shall be, and his mouth shall speak with his and his eyes shall see his, 5* and to Babylon he shall take Sidkijah and there he shall be till I look after him, quoth Jehovah; when you fight the Chaldeans you will not succeed’?”
6* And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah 7 “Here is your uncle Shallum’s son Hanamel going to come to you saying ‘Buy for your own my field at ʽAnathoth, because you have the redemption right to buy it.’” 8** And my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard in accordance with Jehovah’s word and said “Please buy my field at ʽAnathoth in Benjamin, because you have the right to take possession and you have the redemption.” And I knew it was what Jehovah had spoken of, 9 and I bought the field from my ʽAnathoth cousin Hanamel and weighed him out the money, seventeen shekels of silver. 10 And I wrote the paper and sealed it and had it witnessed, and weighed out the money with the scales, 11* and took the deed—the sealed, the conveyance and the delimitation, and the open— 12 and gave it to Baruc the son of Nerijah the son of Mahsejah before the eyes of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had subscribed the deed, before the eyes of all the Judahites who were sitting in the court of the guard, 13 and before their eyes I instructed Baruc 14* “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Take these papers, this sealed deed and the open paper, and put them in an earthen jar so as to let them stand a long time. 15 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this country.”
16 And after I had given the deed to Baruc the son of Nerijah I prayed to Jehovah, 17 “O, O, Lord Jehovah! it was you that made the heavens and the earth by your great power and your outstretched arm; nothing is impossible to you. 18 Befriender of thousands and repayer of fathers’ guilt into the laps of their children after them, great and puissant Deity whose name is Jehovah of Armies, 19 great in purpose and abundant in deed, whose eyes are over all the courses of mankind to give to each in accordance with his course and with the desert of his practices, 20* you who produced signs and miracles in Egypt to this day and in Israel and in the human race and made yourself famous as at this day, 21 and brought your people Israel out of Egypt with signs and miracles and with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror, 22 and gave them this country that you had sworn to their fathers to give them, a country that runs milk and honey, 23* and they came in and took possession of it but did not obey you nor go by your instructions, did not do any of the things you commanded them to do, and all this disaster has befallen them: 24* here have the ramps come to the city to take it, and in consequence of the losses in fighting, the starvation, and the fever, the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans that are attacking it, and what you threatened has come to pass and you see it; 25 and you say to me, Lord Jehovah, ‘Buy the field for money and have the deed witnessed,’ when the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.”
26 And Jehovah’s word came to me 27 “Here, I am Jehovah, God of all mortals; is anything impossible to me? 28** So Jehovah says, Given into the hands of the Chaldeans and of King Nebucadressar of Babylon this city shall be, and he shall take it; 29 and the Chaldeans that are attacking this city shall come in and set this city on fire and burn the houses on whose roofs they made burnings to the Baal and poured libations to other gods to provoke me; 30* for the sons of Israel and of Judah have been doing altogether what displeased me since their childhood. 31* For this city has been offensive and irritating to me from the day that they built it to this day, to get itself removed from before my face 32 for all the wickedness of the sons of Israel and of Judah that they have committed to provoke me, they, their kings, their generals, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 33 and have turned their backs and not their faces to me; and I taught them, early each time, but they did not listen to get instruction; 34 and they placed their horrors in the house that wears my name, to defile it, 35 and they built the Baal-heights in Ben-Hinnom’s Valley to send their children over to Melec, which abomination I had not commanded them to commit, nor thought of it, so as to set Israel to sinning.
36* “So I God Jehovah say now of this city of which you are saying ‘it is given into the hands of the king of Babylon by the losses in fighting and the starvation and the fever’: 37 Here I am going to gather them out of all the countries to which I banished them in my anger and choler and in great wrath, and will bring them back to this place and settle them in security; 38 and I will have them for my people and they shall have me for their God. 39 And I will give them one heart and one course, to fear me always for their good and the good of their children after them; 40 and I will make with them a permanent covenant that I will not turn back from following them up to do them good, and will put my fear in their hearts so that they shall not swerve from my line. 41* And I will delight in doing them good, and will plant them in this country in good faith with all my heart and soul.
42 “For Jehovah says, As I have brought to this people all this great harm, so I am going to bring over them all the good that I am promising for them; 43 and the land shall be bought in this country which you are saying is a desolation without man or beast, given into the hands of the Chaldeans: 44* they shall buy lands for money, and write deeds and seal them and have them witnessed, in the country of Benjamin and in the environs of Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah, the cities of the highland and those of the lowland and those of the South; for I will reinstate them, quoth Jehovah.”
33 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still confined in the court of the guard, 2 “Says Jehovah, he who made earth and shaped it to have it in order,—his name is Jehovah,— 3 Call to me and I will tell you of great and inscrutable things which you had not known. 4* For Israel’s God Jehovah says as to the houses of this city and the palaces of the kings of Judah that are pulled down and as to the ramps and swords 5* that are come to attack with the Chaldeans and to be filled with the corpses of the men whom I have struck down in my anger and choler and for whose viciousness I have veiled my face from this city, 6* Here I am going to set it to healing and recovering, and I will cure it; and I will disclose to them a gracious disposition toward peace and faithfulness, 7* and I will come back to Judah and to Israel and will build them up as at the first; 8* and I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sins against me, and forgive all the guilt of their sins and crimes against me; 9 and I will have it for a joyous fame and for praise and for glorious display to all the nations on earth, who shall hear all the good I am doing to them, and shall be in panic and quake at all the good and welfare I am making for it.
10 “Says Jehovah, In this place that you speak of as a waste without man or beast, in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem which are desolated without man or beast, 11 there shall yet be heard sounds of rejoicing and merrymaking, voices of bridegroom and bride, voices of men saying ‘Give thanks to Jehovah of Armies because Jehovah is good, because his friendship is forever,’ bringing thank-offerings into Jehovah’s house, because I will restore the country to be as it was at first, says Jehovah.
12 “Says Jehovah, In this place that is laid waste without man or beast and in all its cities there shall again be a pasture of shepherds picking out sleeping-places for sheep; 13* in the cities of the highland and in the cities of the lowland and in the cities of the South and in the Benjamite cities and the environs of Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah the sheep shall again pass by the counter’s hands, says Jehovah.” 14 —— 15 —— 16 —— 17 —— 18 —— 19 —— 20 —— 21 —— 22 —— 23 —— 24 —— 25 —— 26 ——
34* The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah while King Nebucadnessar of Babylon and all his forces and all his realm were attacking Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah: 2* Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Go to King Sidkijah of Judah and say to him “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Here I am giving this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it down; 3 and you will not escape from his hands, but will be captured and put into his hands, and your eyes shall see the king of Babylon’s eyes and his mouth shall speak with your mouth, and to Babylon you shall come. 4* Only listen to Jehovah’s word, Sidkijah, king of Judah: says Jehovah for you, You shall not die by the sword: 5 you shall die in peace, and they shall make a burning for you like the burnings for your fathers the early kings before your time, and wail for you ‘Ah, lord!’ for I have made a promise, quoth Jehovah.” 6 And the prophet Jeremiah said all these things to King Sidkijah of Judah 7 while the forces of the king of Babylon were attacking Jerusalem and the only Judahite cities that were left—Lakish and ʽAzekah, because those were what fortified cities remained among the cities of Judah.
8 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah after King Sidkijah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim liberty to them, 9 to have each man let his Hebrew slave go free, that no one should hold them, his brother Jews, in slavery, 10 and all the generals and all the people that took the pledge to let their respective slaves go free, no longer holding them in slavery, had complied and let them go, 11* but afterward had faced about and taken back the slaves they had let go free and reduced them to slavery again: 12 Jehovah’s word came from Jehovah to Jeremiah, 13 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, I made a covenant with your fathers on the day I brought them out of the slave-quarters in Egypt, in these terms: 14 ‘At the end of seven years each of you shall let go his Hebrew brother who is sold to you; he shall serve you six years and you shall let him go from you free’; but your fathers did not listen to me nor turn their ears my way. 15 And you had today faced about and done what I approved, proclaiming liberty to each other, and had made a covenant before me in the house that wears my name; 16* but you have gone back and profaned my name and taken back your respective slaves whom you had let go free to do as they chose, and reduced them to being slaves to you again.
17 “So Jehovah says, You have not listened to me to proclaim freedom to your brothers and comrades: here I am proclaiming you free, quoth Jehovah, to the sword and the pestilence and the famine, and making you victims to all kingdoms on earth; 18* and the men that have overstepped my covenant, in that they did not make good the terms of the covenant they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts, 19 the generals of Judah and of Jerusalem, the eunuchs and the priests and all the common people, who passed between the parts of the calf, 20 I will give into the hands of their enemies and of those who are looking for their lives, and their carcasses shall become food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth; 21 and King Sidkijah of Judah and his generals I will give into the hands of their enemies and of those who are looking for their lives and of the forces of the king of Babylon who have raised the siege; 22 here I give the order, quoth Jehovah, and they shall come back to this city and attack it and take it and burn it down; and the cities of Judah I will make an uninhabited desolation.”
35 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah in the days of Jehojakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: 2 “Go to the house of the Recabites and speak to them, and bring them to Jehovah’s house, to one of the vestries, and give them a drink of wine.” 3 And I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah the son of Habassaniah and his brothers and all his sons and all the house of the Recabites, 4 and brought them to Jehovah’s house, to the vestry of the sons of Hanan the son of Igdaliah the man of God, which is alongside the singers’ vestry, which is over the vestry of Maʽasejah the son of Shallum, guardian of the threshold; 5* and I put before the sons of the house of the Recabites a bowl full of wine, and cups, and I said “Have a drink of wine.” 6 But they said “We do not drink wine, because our father Jonadab the son of Recab gave us a command ‘You shall not drink wine, you nor your sons, forever, 7 nor build a house nor sow seed nor set out a vineyard, nor have them, but live in tents all your days, in order that you may long remain alive over the soil on which you find your homes’; 8* and we have obeyed our father Jonadab the son of Recab as to all the commands he gave us, not drinking wine all our days, ourselves nor our wives nor our children, 9 and not building houses to live in nor having vineyard or field or crop, 10 but living in tents; we have obeyed and lived up to all the commands our father Jonadab gave us. 11 But when Nebucadnessar was coming up into the country we said ‘Come, let us go into Jerusalem for fear of the Chaldean and Syrian forces,’ and we came to live in Jerusalem.”
12 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah 13 “Says Jehovah, Go and say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem ‘Will you not learn the lesson of listening to my words? quoth Jehovah. 14**** The words of Jonadab the son of Recab in which he commanded his sons not to drink wine have been lived up to, and they have not been drinking it to this day, because they have listened to their father’s command; but I have been speaking to you, early each time, and you have not listened to me. 15 And I sent you all my servants the prophets, each one early, to say “Turn back from your wicked ways and reform your practices, and do not follow other gods, worshiping them, and you shall live long on the soil I gave to you and your fathers,” but you did not turn your ears nor listen to me. 16 Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Recab have lived up to their father’s commandments that he gave them, but this people have not listened to me, 17* therefore Israel’s God Jehovah says, Here I am bringing to Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the calamity I have threatened them with, since I spoke to them and they did not listen, called to them and they did not answer.’”
18 And to the house of the Recabites Jeremiah said “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Inasmuch as you have listened to the commandment of your father Jonadab and observed all his commandments and done just as he commanded you to, 19 therefore Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, There shall at no time cease to be men standing before me who come of Jonadab the son of Recab.”
36 And in the year four of Jehojakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from Jehovah for Jeremiah: 2* “Take a book-roll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you about Jerusalem and about Judah and about all the nations from the day I spoke to you, from Josiah’s time to this day; 3 maybe the house of Judah will hear all the harm I am planning to do to them so that they will turn back from their bad courses and I shall forgive their guilt and sin.” 4 And Jeremiah called Baruc the son of Nerijah, and he wrote on a book-roll at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words Jehovah had spoken to him. 5 And Jeremiah gave Baruc the commission “I am debarred, I cannot go into Jehovah’s house; 6 you go in and read Jehovah’s words in Jehovah’s house on a fast day, in the hearing of the people, out of the roll you wrote at my dictation, and read them in the hearing of all Judah that come in out of their cities too. 7 Maybe their appeal will be laid before Jehovah and they will turn back from their bad courses, because great is the anger and displeasure that Jehovah has announced toward this people.” 8* And Baruc the son of Nerijah did just as the prophet Jeremiah had commissioned him to, and read Jehovah’s words out of the book in Jehovah’s house.
9* And in the year five of Jehojakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, at the ninth new moon, all the people had proclaimed a fast before Jehovah at Jerusalem, and all the people that came in from the cities of Judah were in Jerusalem, 10* and Baruc read Jeremiah’s words out of the book in Jehovah’s house, in the office of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the scribe, in the uppermost court, at the new gate of Jehovah’s house, in the hearing of all the people. 11 And Micajah the son of Gemariah the son of Shaphan heard all Jehovah’s words out of the book, 12 and went down to the place, to the secretary’s office, and found all the generals sitting there, Secretary Elishamaʽ and Delaiah the son of Shemaʽiah and Elnathan the son of ʽAcbor and Gemariah the son of Shaphan and Sidkijah the son of Hananiah and all the generals; 13* and Micajah told them all the things he had heard as Baruc read in the hearing of the people. 14* And all the generals sent Jehudi the son of Nethaniah the son of Shelemiah the son of Cushi to Baruc with the message “Take the roll you have read out of in the hearing of the people and come”; and Baruc the son of Nerijah took the roll and came to them. 15 And they said to him “Sit down and read to us”; and Baruc read to them. 16 And when they heard all the words they looked at each other in alarm and said to Baruc “We shall tell the king all these things.” 17 And they asked Baruc “Tell us how you wrote all these things at his dictation”; 18 and Baruc said to them “He dictated all these things to me by word of mouth, and I wrote them in the book with ink.” 19 And the generals said to Baruc “Go and get under cover, you and Jeremiah, and do not have anybody know where you are.”
20* And they went in to the king in the palace court; and the roll they had deposited in Secretary Elishamaʽ’s office. And they reported all these things before the king; 21 and the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll, and he fetched it out of Secretary Elishamaʽ’s office. And Jehudi read it before the king and all the generals that were standing by the king. 22* And the king was sitting in the winter house, in the ninth month, and had the brazier-fire burning before him; 23 and when Jehudi had read three or four columns he would cut it off with his penknife and throw it in the fire in the brazier till the whole roll was gone in the fire in the brazier; 24 and the king and all his officers who heard all these things were not alarmed and did not tear their clothes. 25 And Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah even protested to the king against the burning of the roll, but he did not listen to them. 26 And the king ordered Prince Jerahmeel and Seraiah the son of ʽAzriel and Shelemiah the son of ʽAbdeel to fetch Baruc the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet; but Jehovah screened them.
27 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the roll and the things Baruc had written at Jeremiah’s dictation, “Do it again; 28 take another roll and write in it all the words that originally were in the roll King Jehojakim of Judah burned. 29 And of King Jehojakim of Judah you are to say ‘Says Jehovah, You have burned this roll, as much as to say “Why did you write in it ‘The king of Babylon shall come and ravage this country and make an end of man and beast out of it’?” 30 so Jehovah says of King Jehojakim of Judah, He shall have no one to sit on David’s throne, and his carcass shall be thrown out for drying by day and frost by night; 31 and I will punish him and his issue and his officers for their guilt, and will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem and upon the men of Judah all the disaster that I predicted to them and they did not listen.’”
32 And Jeremiah took another roll and gave it to the scribe Baruc the son of Nerijah, and he wrote in it at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words of the book King Jehojakim of Judah had burned up; and besides there were added to them many words like them.
37 And Sidkijah the son of Josiah became king in place of Coniah the son of Jehojakim, he whom King Nebucadressar of Babylon made king in the country of Judah. 2 And he and his officers and the populace did not listen to Jehovah’s words which he pronounced through the prophet Jeremiah. 3* And King Sidkijah sent Jucal the son of Shelemiah and Priest Sephaniah the son of Ma’asejah to the prophet Jeremiah with the message “Pray for us to our God Jehovah” 4 when Jeremiah was going in and out among the people—they had not put him in jail— 5 and the Pharaoh’s forces had come out of Egypt and the Chaldeans that were besieging Jerusalem had heard the report about them and had raised the siege of Jerusalem.
6* And Jehovah’s word came to the prophet Jeremiah 7 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, You are to say to the king of Judah who has sent you to inquire of me, ‘Here the Pharaoh’s forces that have come out for your help are going back to their own country Egypt, 8 and the Chaldeans will come back and attack this city and burn it down. 9 Says Jehovah, Do not delude yourselves with “The Chaldeans are going to withdraw,” for they will not. 10 For if you were to have cut down all the Chaldean forces that are attacking you, and what were left were some men that had been run through, they would stand up in their tents and burn this city down.’”
11 And while the Chaldean forces were withdrawn from before Jerusalem on account of the Pharaoh’s forces 12 Jeremiah was going out of Jerusalem to go to the Benjamite country to take a share among the people there; 13* and when he came to the Benjamin gate, there being an official in charge there named Irijah the son of Shelemiah the son of Hananiah, he arrested the prophet Jeremiah, saying “You are deserting to the Chaldeans.” 14 And Jeremiah said “It is a lie; I am not deserting to the Chaldeans”; but he did not listen to him.
And Irijah arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the generals. 15 And the generals were in a rage at Jeremiah and beat him and put him in the house of confinement, Secretary Jehonathan’s house (for they had made that the jail). 16 And Jeremiah came into the cistern-room and the cellars; and Jeremiah remained there a long time. 17 And Sidkijah sent and fetched him, and the king asked him in private in his palace “Is there a word from Jehovah?” And he said “Yes,” and said “You will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon.” 18 And Jeremiah said to King Sidkijah “What sin have I committed against you and your officers and this people, that you have put me in jail? 19 where are your prophets that prophesied to you ‘The king of Babylon will not come against you nor against this country’? 20 Now listen, your majesty: admit my plea and do not send me back to Secretary Jehonathan’s house, or I shall die there.” 21* And King Sidkijah gave orders, and they committed Jeremiah to the court of the guard, giving him a biscuit a day from the bakers’ street till all the bread in the city was exhausted.
And Jeremiah sat in the court of the guard.
38 And Shephatiah the son of Mattan and Gedaliah the son of Pashhur and Jucal the son of Shelemiah and Pashhur the son of Malkijah heard the words Jeremiah was speaking to all the people: 2 “Says Jehovah, He who stays in this city will die by sword and by starvation, but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans shall live, and have his life for a booty, and be alive. 3 Says Jehovah, This city shall be given into the hands of the forces of the king of Babylon, and they shall take it”; 4 and the generals said to the king “Let this man be put to death, seeing that he is dispiriting the fighting men that we have left in this city, and all the people, saying things like these to them; for this man is not aiming at the welfare of this people, but at harm.” 5* And King Sidkijah said “You have him in your hands; for the king is not able to do anything where you are concerned.” 6* And they threw him into Prince Malkijah’s cistern in the court of the guard; they let him down by ropes; and there was no water in the cistern, but there was mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud.
7 And ʽEbed-Melec the Negro, a eunuch, who was in the palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern. And the king was sitting in the Benjamin gate; 8 and ʽEbed-Melec went out of the palace and spoke to the king, 9* saying “Your majesty, these men have done a bad thing in all they have done to the prophet Jeremiah, that they have thrown him into the cistern—and he was dying where he was with starvation, because there is no longer any bread in the city.” 10 And the king gave ʽEbed-Melec the order “Take along three men from here and get the prophet Jeremiah up out of the cistern before he dies”; 11 and ʽEbed-Melec took the men along and went into the palace and down underneath the treasure-room and took from there the most worn-out old clothes and rags, and let them down by cords to Jeremiah in the cistern. 12 And ʽEbed-Melec the Negro said to Jeremiah “Place the worn-out old clothes and rags under your armpits under the cords,” and Jeremiah did so; 13 and they hauled Jeremiah up out of the cistern by the cords. And Jeremiah stayed in the court of the guard.
14* And King Sidkijah sent for the prophet Jeremiah and fetched him to him at the Squire’s Entrance in Jehovah’s house, and the king said to him “I am putting a question to you; do not refuse to answer me.” 15 And Jeremiah said to King Sidkijah “When I tell you, you will put me to death, will you not? and when I give you advice you will not listen to me.” 16 And King Sidkijah swore to Jeremiah privately “By Jehovah, who made us this soul, I will not put you to death nor give you into the hands of these men who are looking for your life.” 17 And Jeremiah said to Sidkijah “Says Jehovah the God of Armies, Israel’s God, If you surrender to the king of Babylon’s generals, you personally will remain alive, and this city will not be burned down, and you and your family will remain alive; 18 but if you do not, this city will be given into the hands of the Chaldeans and they will burn it down, and you will not escape their hands.”
19 And the king said to Jeremiah “I am apprehensive of the Jews that have deserted to the Chaldeans, for fear they will give me into their hands and they will do as they like with me.” 20 But Jeremiah said “They will not give you to them. Obey Jehovah in the thing I am speaking to you of, and you will be well off and will have your life. 21 But if you refuse to surrender, this is the thing Jehovah has let me see: 22 there were all the women that remain in the palace of the king of Judah being brought out to the king of Babylon’s generals, and there they were saying ‘The men you kept on good terms with egged you on and prevailed on you, got your feet stuck in the morass, and backed out’; 23 and all your wives and children they were bringing out to the Chaldeans, and you yourself did not escape their hands. For you will fall into the king of Babylon’s hands and will get this city burned down.”
24 And Sidkijah said to Jeremiah “Let no person know of these things and you shall not die. 25 And when the generals hear that I talked with you, and come to you and say to you ‘Tell us what the king said; do not refuse to answer us, and we won’t kill you; what did the king say to you?’ 26 tell them ‘I am laying my appeal before the king that he will not send me back to Jehonathan’s house to die there.’” 27 And all the generals came to Jeremiah and asked him, and he told them just these words that the king directed him to, and they let him alone; for the story did not come out. 28 And Jeremiah stayed in the court of the guard up to the day that Jerusalem was taken.
39 And when Jerusalem was taken (in the year nine of King Sidkijah of Judah, in the tenth month, King Nebucadressar of Babylon and all his forces came to Jerusalem and besieged it; 2 in the year eleven of Sidkijah, in the fourth month, on the ninth of the month, the city was breached) 3* all the generals of the king of Babylon came and seated themselves in the Middle Gate: Nergal-sareser, Samgar-nebo, Chief Eunuch Sarsekim, Chief Magus Nergal-sareser, and all the rest of the generals of the king of Babylon. 4 And when King Sidkijah of Judah and all the fighting men saw them, they took flight and went out of the city by night by the road to the king’s garden, by the gate between the two walls, and went out toward the Rift Valley. 5 But the Chaldean forces pursued them and overtook Sidkijah on the flats at Jericho, and took him and brought him up to King Nebucadnessar of Babylon at Riblah in the Hamath country, and he held a court and tried him. 6 And the king of Babylon cut the throats of Sidkijah’s sons before his eyes; and the king of Babylon cut the throats of all the nobles of Judah. 7 And he put out Sidkijah’s eyes and put him in fetters to bring him to Babylon.
8 And the Chaldeans burned down the royal palace and the houses of the people, and pulled down the walls of Jerusalem. 9 And the rest of the people, those who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to him and the rest of the people that were left, Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan deported to Babylon; 10* but the poorest of the people, those who had nothing, Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan left in the city of Jerusalem and gave them vineyards and farms on that day.
11 And King Nebucadressar of Babylon gave orders regarding Jeremiah through Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan, 12 “Take him and have an eye to him and do not do anything bad to him, but do with him just as he tells you.” 13* And Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan and Chief Eunuch Nebushazban and Chief Magus Nergal-sareser and all the king of Babylon’s chiefs sent 14* and fetched Jeremiah from the court of the guard and gave him to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan to take him out home. And he lived among the people.
15 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah while he was confined in the court of the guard 16* “Go and say to ʽEbed-Melec the Negro ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Here I am bringing upon this city the things I have said, for bad and not for good; 17 but I will deliver you on that day, quoth Jehovah, and you shall not be given into the hands of the men before whom you quail; 18 for I will positively bring you off safe and you shall not fall by the sword but shall have your life for booty, because you put your trust in me, quoth Jehovah.’”
40 The word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah after Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan let him go at Ramah, when he took him, he being fettered in the midst of the general body of deportees from Jerusalem and Judah who were being deported to Babylon; 2 but the Chief Guardsman took Jeremiah and said to him “Your God Jehovah enounced this calamity for this place, 3** and Jehovah has done it because you had sinned against Jehovah and not obeyed him. 4 Now here I release you today from the fetters on your hands: if you think best to come with me to Babylon, come, and I will look after you; and if you think it undesirable to come with me to Babylon, don’t; see, you have all the country before you; wherever you think it best and most suitable to go, go”; 5 and as he was not yet going back, “and go back to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has put in charge of the cities of Judah, and live with him among the people; or wherever you think it suitable to go, go”; and the Chief Guardsman gave him an allowance and a largess and sent him off. 6 And Jeremiah came to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam at Mispah and lived with him among the people that remained in the country.
7 And all the captains of the field forces, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had put Gedaliah the son of Ahikam in charge of the country, and that he had consigned to him men and women and children and some of the poorest of the country, of those who were not deported to Babylon; 8* and there came to Gedaliah at Mispah Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah and Johanan and Jonathan the sons of Kareah and Seraiah the son of Tanhumeth and the sons of ʽOphai the Netophathite and Izaniah the son of the Maʽacathite, they and their men, 9* and Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan swore to them and their men, saying “Do not be afraid of the Chaldeans’ officers: settle down in the country and be subject to the king of Babylon and you will be well off. 10* Here am I living at Mispah to represent you before the Chaldeans who come to us; for your part get in wine and fruit and oil and put them in your jars and bins and live in your cities that you have appropriated.” 11* And all the Jews that were in Moab and among the Bene-ʽAmmon and in Edom and in all the countries also heard that the king of Babylon had left a remnant of Judah and had put Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan in charge of them; 12 and all the Jews came back from all the places to which they had been driven, and came into the country of Judah to Gedaliah at Mispah, and got in wine and fruit in very large quantities.
13 And Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains of the field forces came to Gedaliah at Mispah 14 and said to him “Do you know that King Baʽalis of the Bene-ʽAmmon has sent Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah to assassinate you?” but Gedaliah the son of Ahikam did not believe them. 15 And Johanan the son of Kareah said privately to Gedaliah at Mispah “Let me go and kill Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah, and nobody will know about it; why should he assassinate you and all Judah be scattered, that have gathered to you, and the remnant of Judah perish?” 16 but Gedaliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah “Do not do any such thing, for what you are telling me about Ishmaʽel is false.”
41 And at the seventh new moon Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah the son of Elishamaʽ, of the royal blood, and ten men with him, came to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam at Mispah, and they ate a meal together there at Mispah; 2 and Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah and the ten men he had with him stood up and struck Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan dead with their swords, the one the king of Babylon had put in charge of the country; 3 and all the Jews he had with him at Mispah, and all the Chaldeans there were there, Ishmaʽel killed. 4 And on the second day from the killing of Gedaliah, when nobody had found it out, 5 some men came from Shekem, Shilo, and Samaria, eighty men with their beards shaved and their clothes torn and their skins hacked and with grain-offering and frankincense in their hands to bring to Jehovah’s house; 6* and Ishmaʽel went out to meet them. They were coming along weeping, and he said to them “Come in to Gedaliah”; 7 and when they came inside the city Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah cut their throats and let the blood go inside the cistern, 8 he and the ten men he had with him. But there were ten men among them who said to Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah “Do not kill us, because we have caches in the countryside, wheat and barley and oil and honey”; and he refrained from killing them among their brothers. 9 And the cistern into which Ishmaʽel threw all the corpses of the men he had killed was a great cistern that King Asa had made in his preparations against King Baʽasha of Israel; Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah filled it up with victims. 10* And Ishmaʽel carried off by force all the remainder of the people at Mispah and the king’s daughters, whom Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan had installed with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, and started to go across to the Bene-ʽAmmon.
11 And Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains who were with him heard of all the bad work Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah had done, 12 and they took all the men and went to attack Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah; and they found him at Much-Water in Gibeon. 13 And when all the people Ishmaʽel had with him saw Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains who were with him they were glad, 14 and all the people Ishmaʽel had carried off from Mispah swung round and turned back and went to Johanan the son of Kareah; 15 and Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah got away from Johanan with eight men and went to the Bene-ʽAmmon. 16* And Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains who were with him took all the remnant of the people that he had taken back from Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah, whom Ishma’el the son of Nethaniah had carried off from Mispah after he killed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, men (the fighting men) and women and children and eunuchs, whom he had brought back from Gibeon, 17** and they went and took up quarters in Kimham’s Settlement alongside Bethlehem to go off and get to Egypt 18 for fear of the Chaldeans; for they were afraid of them because Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah had killed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, whom the king of Babylon had put in charge of the country.
42** And all the captains, and Johanan the son of Kareah and ʽAzariah the son of Maʽasejah and all the people, from the smallest to the greatest, approached the prophet Jeremiah 2* and said to him “Accept our plea and pray to your God Jehovah for this remnant (for we that remain are a few out of many, as you see us to be with your own eyes) 3 and have your God Jehovah tell us the way we are to go and the thing we are to do.” 4 And the prophet Jeremiah said to them “Agreed; I shall pray to your God Jehovah as you say, and every word of answer that Jehovah gives you I will tell to you, I will not withhold a word from you.” 5* And they said to Jeremiah “So help us Jehovah, we will do exactly according to the word Jehovah sends us by you; 6 be it good or bad, we will obey our God Jehovah to whom we are sending you, in order that it may be well with us because we obey our God Jehovah.”
7 And at the end of ten days Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah, 8 and he called Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains who were with him and all the people from the smallest to the greatest 9 and said to them “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, to whom you sent me to lay your appeal before him, 10 If you stay here in this country I will build you up and not pull you down, plant you and not uproot you; for I am sorry for the harm I have done you. 11 Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are so afraid; do not be afraid, quoth Jehovah, because I am with you to save you and to deliver you out of his hands, 12* and I will give you his sympathy and he shall be sympathetic toward you and settle you on your soil. 13 But if you say ‘We will not stay in this country,’ not obeying your God Jehovah, 14 thinking ‘No, we will go into Egypt where we shall not see war nor hear the sound of a ram-horn nor starve for bread, and live there,’15 —so now hear Jehovah’s word, remnant of Judah: says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, If you do set your faces to go into Egypt, and go in and live as immigrants there, 16 then the swords you are afraid of shall reach you there in Egypt, and the starvation you are worrying about shall dog you to Egypt, and you shall die there; 17 and all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to live as immigrants there shall die by swords, by starvation, and by epidemics, and no one of theirs shall survive or escape from the disaster I am bringing upon them. 18 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, As my anger and resentment were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so will my resentment be poured out on you at your going into Egypt, and you shall be a thing to be cursed by and to appall and to be abused and taunted, and you shall not see this place again. 19 Jehovah has spoken for you, remnant of Judah: do not go into Egypt. You are to take notice that I bear witness against you today 20 that you have been fooling with your own lives, because you yourselves sent me to your God Jehovah with the words ‘Pray to our God Jehovah for us, and tell us exactly how our God Jehovah says and we will do so,’ 21 and I have told you today and you have not obeyed your God Jehovah as to every precept he sent to you by me. 22 So now take notice that by swords, starvation, and epidemics you will die in the place you are pleased to go to live as immigrants there.”
43 But when Jeremiah had finished telling all the people all the words of their God Jehovah which their God Jehovah had sent to them by him, all these words, 2 ʽAzariah the son of Maʽasejah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the headstrong men said to Jeremiah “It is a lie you are telling: our God Jehovah did not send you to say ‘You are not to go into Egypt to live as immigrants there,’ 3 but Baruc the son of Nerijah is instigating you against us so as to give us into the hands of the Chaldeans for them to kill us and deport us to Babylon”; 4 and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains of the forces and all the people did not obey Jehovah as to staying in Judah. 5 And Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains of the forces took all the remnant of Judah that had come back out of all the nations among whom they had been in exile to live immigrant lives in Judah, 6 the men and the women and the children and the princesses and all the persons Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and the prophet Jeremiah and Baruc the son of Nerijah, 7 and went into Egypt; for they did not obey Jehovah; and they came to Tehaphnehes.
8 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah at Tehaphnehes, 9 “Take large stones with your own hands and embed them in mortar in the sunken square at the door of the Pharaoh’s house at Tehaphnehes under the eyes of some Jews, 10** and say to them ‘Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, I am going to send and fetch my servant King Nebucadressar of Babylon, and he will set his chair over these stones, the ones I have set, and put up his awning over them; 11 and he will go in and strike Egypt down, him who is for death for death and him who is for foreign slavery for foreign slavery and him who is for the sword for the sword, 12 and set fire to the temples of Egypt’s gods and burn them, and carry them off into foreign slavery, and pick the lice out of Egypt as a shepherd does out of his blanket, and go out of there unmolested. 13* And he will break up the obelisks of Beth-Shemesh in Egypt, and burn down the temples of Egypt’s gods.’”
44 The word that came to Jeremiah to all the Jews that were living in Egypt; those that lived in Migdol and in Tehaphnehes and in Memphis and in the country of Pathros: 2 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, You yourselves saw all the calamity I brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah: there they are this day a waste, with nobody living in them. 3 It was on account of their wickedness that they had practiced, provoking me, going making burnings to other gods that you had never known, 4 I sending them all my servants the prophets, each one early, with the word ‘Do not do this abominable thing which I hate’ 5 but they not listening nor giving any ear so as to turn back from their wickedness, not to make burnings to other gods; 6 and my ire and anger was poured out, and blazed in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, and they became a waste, a desolation, as at this day.
7 “And now Israel’s God Jehovah the God of Armies says, Why are you doing a great harm to yourselves, exterminating from among Judah man and woman of yours, child at play and baby at the breast, not leaving yourselves a remnant, 8 provoking me with the work of your hands, making burnings to other gods in the country of Egypt into which you are coming to live there as immigrants, so as to cause yourselves to become a thing to be abused and taunted among all the nations on earth? 9 you have thrown into the shade the memory of the vicious acts of your fathers and of the kings of Judah and its generals and your own and your wives’ vicious acts that they committed in the country of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; 10 they felt no remorse to this day, and were not afraid and did not go by my instructions and usages that I had put before them and their fathers.
11* “So Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, Here I am setting my face toward you to exterminate all Judah; 12 and I will take the remnant of Judah who have set their faces to come into Egypt to live as immigrants there, and all shall come to an end in Egypt, shall fall by sword and starvation; great and small they shall come to an end, by sword and starvation they shall die, and they shall become a thing to be cursed by and to appall and to be abused and taunted; 13 and I will punish those who are living in Egypt as I did punish Jerusalem, with sword and starvation and pestilence; 14 and no one belonging to the remnant of Judah that have come to live as immigrants there in Egypt shall escape or survive to go back to Judah where they look forward to going back, and live there. For nobody shall get back but some refugees.”
15 And all the men who knew their wives were making burnings to other gods, and all the women that were standing there, a great assembly, and all the people that were living in Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah 16 “As to the word you have spoken to us in Jehovah’s name, we are not obeying you, 17 for we are positively going to live up to the promise that went out of our mouths, to make burnings to the Queen of the Sky and to pour libations to her, as we and our fathers and our kings and generals did in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem and had all the bread we wanted and were comfortable and saw no calamities; 18 but since the time that we left off making burnings to the Queen of the Sky and pouring libations to her we have been short of everything and are all gone with sword and starvation. 19 And when we do make burnings to the Queen of the Sky and pour libations to her, is it without our husbands’ consent that we have been making cauvan-cakes to represent her and pouring libations to her?”
20 And Jeremiah said to all the people, to the men and to the women and to all the people that were answering him back, 21 “Why, the burning you have been doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your generals and the common people, is what Jehovah remembers and has on his mind, 22* and Jehovah can no longer stand the viciousness of your practices, the abominations you have been committing, and so your country has become a waste, a desolation, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as it is this day. 23 It was in consequence of your having made the burnings and sinned against Jehovah, and not obeyed Jehovah nor gone by his instructions, usages, and lessons, that you have met with this calamity, bringing you to such a state as you are in this day.”
24* And Jeremiah said to all the people and to all the women “Hear Jehovah’s word, all you of Judah that are in Egypt: 25 Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, You women have promised with your mouths and executed it with your hands, ‘Perform we will our vows that we have made, making burnings to the Queen of the Sky and pouring libations to her’; make good your vows you shall, and perform the things you vowed. 26 So hear Jehovah’s word, all Judah resident in Egypt: I hereby swear by my great name, says Jehovah, that my name shall no longer be pronounced by the mouths of the men of Judah saying ‘By Jehovah’s life’ in all Egypt. 27 Here I am going to be paying attention to you for harm and not for good, and all the men of Judah that are in Egypt shall die out by sword and by starvation till they are finished, 28 and refugees from the sword shall come back from Egypt to Judah in small numbers; and all the remnant of Judah that have come to Egypt to live as immigrants there shall find out whose word will hold good, mine or theirs. 29 And this is the sign you are to have, quoth Jehovah, that I am going to punish you in this place, in order that you may know that my words will positively hold good for your harm: 30* says Jehovah, Here I am giving Pharaoh Hophraʽ, the king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies and of those who are looking for his life, as I gave King Sidkijah of Judah into the hands of King Nebucadressar of Babylon, his enemy who was looking for his life.”
45* The word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruc the son of Nerijah when he was writing these words down from Jeremiah’s dictation in the year four of Jehojakim the son of Josiah as king of Judah: 2 “Says Israel’s God Jehovah of you, Baruc, 3 You have been saying ‘Woe is me, because Jehovah has added grief to my misery! I have hard work groaning and find no rest!’ 4* You shall say to him ‘Says Jehovah, Here am I myself demolishing what I built and uprooting what I planted, 5 and are you to seek great things for yourself? do not do so; for here I am bringing calamity upon all mortals, quoth Jehovah. But I will give you your life for a booty at all the places you are to go to.’”
46 Jehovah’s word that came to the prophet Jeremiah about the nations. 2 For Egypt.
About the forces of Pharaoh Neco, the king of Egypt, which he had on the river Euphrates at Carkemish, which King Nebucadressar of Babylon defeated in the year four of Jehojakim the son of Josiah as king of Judah.
3 Draw up the line of buckler and shield, and forward to the charge! 4 Hitch the ponies and mount the horses and stand in order with helmet on head! brighten up the pikes, put on the hauberks! 5 How comes it I see those dismayed, falling back, and their crack fighters broken, off on the dead run, never facing about!—terror on every side, quoth Jehovah! 6* The swift man shall not get off, and the brave man not save himself; northward on the bank of the river Euphrates they have stumbled, they have fallen. 7 Who is this that comes up like the Nile, whose water rolls like the rivers? 8 It is Egypt comes up like the Nile, its water rolls like the rivers, and it thinks “I will go up, will conquer land, will destroy a city and those that live in it.” 9* Come up, ponies, and run wild, chariots; and out with the crack fighters, Nubia and Put that use the shield, the Ludites that bend the bow; 10 but our God Jehovah has that day for a day of vengeance, to avenge himself on his foes, and the sword shall eat its fill and drink freely of their blood, because the Lord Jehovah of Armies is holding a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. 11 Go up to Gilead and get balm, maiden daughter of Egypt; it is of no use that you have tried so many treatments, it does not heal over. 12 Nations have heard of your ignominy, and your clamor fills the earth, because champion stumbled over champion, they both fell together.
13 The word that Jehovah spoke to the prophet Jeremiah of the king of Babylon’s coming to strike Egypt:
14 Announce it at Migdol and publish it at Memphis: say “Take up your positions and get ready, because swords have eaten around you. 15 How is it your champion bull Apis has taken flight? he did not stand his ground because Jehovah shouldered him. 16 There are many stumbling; yes, one man falls against another; and they say ‘Up, let us go back to our own people and our native country for fear of the ruthless sword.’ 17* They call the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, Loud-but-Too-Late. 18 As I live, quoth the King whose name is Jehovah of Armies, he will come like Tabor among the mountains, like Carmel on the sea. 19 Get up an outfit for going into exile, long-settled daughter of Egypt, for Memphis will become a desolation and be ruined past living in. 20 Egypt is a pretty heifer; a gadfly from the north has come at her. 21 The hired men she has within her too are like stall-fed calves, because they too have together turned and run, made no stand, because their day of calamity has come upon them, their time of punishment; 22 they will go off with a sound like a snake going through sand. They have come to her with axes like woodcutters; 23* they have cut her greenwood, quoth Jehovah, endless as it was, for there are more of them than of the grasshoppers, their number is inexpressible. 24 The daughter of Egypt is put to shame, is given into the hands of a northern people. 25 Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies has said ‘Here I am going to punish Amon in Thebes, and the Pharaoh and those who trust to him, 26* and give them into the hands of those who are looking for their lives and into the hands of King Nebucadressar of Babylon and of his soldiers; and after that she shall live a settled life as of old,’ quoth Jehovah.
27 “But as for you, do not be afraid, my servant Jacob, and do not be dismayed, Israel, because here I am going to save you out of distant places and your stock out of the country of their captivity; and Jacob shall come back to living quietly and at ease with nobody to alarm him. 28 Do not you be afraid, my servant Jacob, quoth Jehovah, for I am with you; for I will make an end among all the nations where I banished you, but not make an end of you, but discipline you duly and not let you off.”
2 Says Jehovah, Here is water coming up out of the north which will become a washing-out torrent and will wash out earth and all that fills it, city and all those that live in it; and mankind shall cry out, and all that live in the country shall howl, 3 at the sound of the stamping hoofs of his chargers, at the bounding of his chariots, the uproar of his wheels. Fathers do not turn toward their children for nervelessness over 4 the day that is coming to make havoc of all the Philistines, to deprive Tyre and Sidon of every surviving helper; for Jehovah is making havoc of the Philistines, the remnant of the Caphtor coast. 5** Baldness has come to Ghaza; Ashkelon is cut off; remnant of ʽAnakites, how long will you be hacking yourselves? 6* Ah, sword of Jehovah’s, how far will you go and not be quiet? get into your sheath, take a little time off, be still. 7* How is it to be quiet when Jehovah has given it orders? to Ashkelon and to the seabeach, there he has directed it.
Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, Ha for Nebo, because she is ravaged! Kirjathaim is taken, the fastness is brought to shame and dismay. 2 Moab’s praise no longer exists; in Heshbon there has been mischief planned against her, “come, let us cut short her nationhood.” You too, Madmen, shall be made mute; swords shall go after you. 3 The sound of an outcry from Horonaim, a great rapine and ruin! 4* Moab is ruined, they have made their outcry heard to Shogar. 5 For up Luhith slope goes a weeper in tears; for down Horonaim slope they hear a cry of ruin. 6* Be off, save your lives, to become like a wild ass in the wilderness. 7 For since you put confidence in your works and your hoards, you too shall be taken, and Kemosh shall go out to deportation, his priests and his generals together; 8 and a ravager shall come to every city, and not a city shall escape; and the vale shall perish and the tableland be devastated, as Jehovah said. 9* Give Moab wings, because she has to fly! and her cities shall become a desolation with nobody living in them. 10 Cursed be he who does Jehovah’s work sluggishly, and cursed be he who holds his sword back from bloodshedding!
11 Moab has been at ease ever since its youth; it is lying quiet on its lees and has never been emptied from one container into another, and has never gone away in deportation; therefore its taste has stood still in it and it has had no change of odor. 12* So here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when I will send it tilters who will tilt it and empty its containers and smash their jars; 13 and Moab shall be disappointed in Kemosh as the house of Israel were disappointed in their reliance Bethel. 14 How should you say “we are champions and stalwart men for war”? 15* the ravager of Moab has climbed up to its cities, and the choicest of its young men have gone down in slaughter, quoth the King, whose name is Jehovah of Armies. 16 Moab’s ruin is close at hand and its disaster is hastening fast; 17 lament for it, all you neighbors around it and all you that know its name, say “How it is broken, the staff of strength, the mace of magnificence!” 18* Come down out of glory and sit in a thirsty place, dame of Dibon, for the ravager of Moab has climbed up on you, has broken up your fortifications. 19 Stand by a roadside and watch, dame of ʽAroʽer, ask a fugitive man or a refugee woman; say “What has happened?” 20* Moab is put to shame because it has gone to pieces; howl and cry out! report at the Arnon that Moab is ravaged. 21 And judgment has come to the tableland, to Holon and Jahsah and Mephaʽath 22 and Dibon and Nebo and Beth-Diblathaim 23 and Kirjathaim and Beth-Gamul and Beth-meʽon 24 and Kerijoth and Bosrah and all the cities of the Moabite country, far and near. 25 Moab’s horn is chopped off and his arm is broken, quoth Jehovah. 26 Get him drunk, because he blustered against Jehovah, and let Moab splash down into his vomit and be a butt for laughter himself; 27 or was Israel not a butt of yours? or was he found among thieves, that as often as you speak of him you give a shake?
28 Leave cities and perch on the crag, inhabitants of Moab, and be like the dove that nests in the far side of the mouth of a sinkhole. 29 We have heard of Moab’s pride, very proud, his high mightiness and pride and conceit and lofty notions; 30* I know his aggressiveness, quoth Jehovah; and his fine words are not reliable, unreliably they act. 31* Therefore I will howl over Moab and for all Moab I will cry out; sigh over the men of Kir-Heres! 32 Beyond Jaʽzer’s weeping I will weep for you, vine of Sibmah; your runners went over sea, reached to the sea of Jaʽzer; on your summer fruit and your vintage the picker’s whoop has fallen. 33* And gladness and glee are to be gathered off out of Carmel and out of Moab, and I have abolished wine out of presses; the treader does not tread, the whoop is no whoop. 34 From the outcry of Heshbon they have sent their voice through to Elealeh, to Jahas, from Soghar to Horonaim, Third ʽEglath; for even Leopard Water will be a desolation. 35 I have abolished for Moab, quoth Jehovah, offerer on height and burner of incense to his god. 36 Therefore my heart rings like a flute for Moab, and my heart rings like a flute for the men of Kir-Heres; therefore the rest of his making have perished. 37 For every head is bald and every beard cut off, there are gashes on all arms and sackcloth on waist; 38 on all the roofs of Moab and in all its squares everything is wailing, because I have broken Moab like an unsatisfactory dish, quoth Jehovah; 39 how it smashed! howl! How Moab has turned his back! for shame! and Moab has become an object of laughter and dismay to all around him.
40 For Jehovah says, 41 The towns are taken and the fastnesses are stormed, 42 and Moab is stamped out from being a people, because it blustered against Jehovah. 43 Dread and chasm and trap are at you, inhabitant of Moab, quoth Jehovah; 44 he who takes flight from the dread will come to fall into the chasm, and he who gets up out of the chasm will be caught in the trap; for I will bring these things to Moab in the year of their punishment, quoth Jehovah. 45 Fugitives halted in the shadow of Heshbon for want of breath, because a fire has gone out from Heshbon, a flame from Sihon’s town, and will devour Moab’s brow and the crown of the sons of tumult. 46* Woe to you, Moab! you are lost, people of Kemosh! because your sons are taken into foreign slavery, and your daughters likewise. 47 But I will bring Moab back from slavery in the future days, quoth Jehovah. Thus far the judgment on Moab.
49 For the Bene-ʽAmmon Jehovah says, Has Israel no sons? or is there nobody of his to take possession? how comes it that Milcom has taken the possession of Gad and his people have settled in its cities? 2 So here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when I will have a war-cry heard at Rabbah of the Bene-ʽAmmon, and she shall become a desolate ruin, and her dependencies shall be set on fire; and Israel shall take the possessions of those who dispossessed him, says Jehovah. 3* Howl, Heshbon, because Ghai is ravaged; cry out, daughters of Rabbah, belt yourselves with sackcloths, wail and rove about the sheepfolds, because Milcom has gone into deportation, his priests and his captains together. 4* Why are you boasting of the vales, rash lady, you that are confident in your reserve supplies—“who will come where I am?” 5 Here I am bringing dread over you, quoth the Lord Jehovah of Armies, from everybody around you, and you will make off, each one whatever way he is facing, and there will be nobody to give the runaway a home. 6 But after that I will bring the Bene-ʽAmmon back from slavery, quoth Jehovah.
7* For Edom Jehovah says, There is no longer any wisdom in Teman; good ideas have stopped coming to shrewd men, their wisdom has spoiled. 8* Take flight, turn about, live deep down, inhabitants of Dedan, because I have brought ʽEsau’s calamity upon him at his time of punishment. 9 If grape-gatherers come to you, they will leave after-pickings; if thieves in the night, they will do as much damage as they have occasion for. 10 For I have stripped ʽEsau bare, I have unscreened his places of concealment and he cannot hide; his descendants are made havoc of, and his brothers and his neighbors, and he is gone. 11 Leave your orphans, I will maintain them; and let your widows have confidence in me.
12 For Jehovah says, Those to whom it was not due to drink the cup shall drink, and is it to be you that go scot-free? you shall not, but drink you shall. 13 For I swear by myself, quoth Jehovah, that Bosrah shall become an object of horror and of taunting, a waste and a curse, and all its cities shall become perpetual wastes. 14 I have heard a report from Jehovah, and a courier is sent out among the nations, “Gather and come on against her and stand up for war”; 15 for here I have made you little among the nations, despised among mankind. 16 Your reign of terror has deluded you, your self-confidence, perched in the crannies of the cliffs, hilltop-holder! Though you build your nest as high as the vulture, from there I will bring you down, quoth Jehovah. 17 And Edom shall become an object of horror; everyone who goes past her shall be appalled and whistle at all the blows she has received. 18 As at the overthrow of Sodom and Ghomorrah and their neighbors, says Jehovah, not a man shall live there nor any human being spend time in her. 19*** Here, like a lion coming up from the Jordan jungle to a permanent pasture, so on a sudden I will set him running from it; and what young man is there to set over it? for who is like me, and who will challenge me, and what shepherd is there that will stand his ground before me? 20 So listen to Jehovah’s policy that he has planned toward Edom and his ideas that he has thought of toward the inhabitants of Teman: the shepherd boys will drag them off, their pasture shall be aghast at them. 21** At the sound of their fall the earth quakes, cries out, its voice is heard at the Red Sea. 22 There is the like of a vulture soaring up and swooping down and spreading its wings over Bosrah; and the hearts of Edom’s champions will on that day become like the heart of a woman in birth-pains.
23* For Damascus. Hamath is put to shame, and Arpad; because they have heard bad news they are swaying back and forth; there is anxiety in the sea, it cannot be quiet. 24 Damascus falters, turns to run, is seized with throes; distress and pangs have taken hold of it as they do of a childbearing woman. 25* How deserted is it not, city of praise, town of my joy! 26 so its young men shall fall in its squares and all the men of war shall be silenced on that day, quoth Jehovah of Armies; 27 and I will light a fire in the wall of Damascus which shall consume Ben-Hadad’s palaces.
28 For Kedar and the kingdoms of Hasor which King Nebucadressar of Babylon cut down. Says Jehovah, Up with you to Kedar and make havoc of the Eastern Bedouins! 29 Their tents and their sheep and goats they shall take, their curtains and all their furnishings and their camels they shall carry off, and call up against them terror from all sides. 30* Take to flight, rove far and wide, live deep in the desert, inhabitants of Hasor, quoth Jehovah; for King Nebucadressar of Babylon has adopted a policy against you and formed a project. 31** Up with you to a tranquil nation living a fearless life, one that has no doors nor bar but dwells in isolation, 32* and their camels shall be taken for plunder and their hosts of livestock for booty; and I will scatter them to every wind, those that are clipped at the side, and will bring their calamity in from every quarter, quoth Jehovah. 33 And Hasor shall be a retreat of jackals, a desolation forever; no man shall settle there nor any human being seek a home in it.
34 What word of Jehovah came to the prophet Jeremiah to ʽElam in the beginning of the reign of King Sidkijah of Judah: 35 Says Jehovah of Armies, Here I am going to break ʽElam’s bow, the starting-point of his might; 36 and I will bring into ʽElam four winds from the four edges of the sky, and I will strew them on all these winds and there shall not be a nation where the exiles of ʽElam do not come. 37* And I will dismay ʽElam before their enemies and before those who are looking for their lives, and I will bring upon them a calamity, my anger, quoth Jehovah, and will turn the sword loose behind them till I have finished them; 38 and I will plant my chair in ʽElam and destroy out of it king and general, quoth Jehovah. 39 But in a future time I will bring ʽElam back from slavery, quoth Jehovah.
50 The word that Jehovah spoke of Babylon, of the Chaldean country, by the prophet Jeremiah. 2* Announce among the nations and sound it abroad, and raise a signal; sound it abroad, do not suppress it; say “Babylon is taken, and Bel is put to shame, Marduk is dismayed.” 3* For a nation has come up against her from the north; it shall render her country a desolation, and there shall be no one living in it; man and beast, they have wandered away. 4* In those days and at that time, quoth Jehovah, the sons of Israel shall come, they and the sons of Judah together; weeping as they go, they shall go and look for their God Jehovah. 5 They shall inquire for Sion, with their faces this way: “come, let us join Jehovah in a perpetual covenant never to be forgotten.” 6* My people were lost sheep: their shepherds had got them to straying over labyrinths of mountains, they had gone from mountain to hill, had forgotten their sleeping-places. 7 Everybody that found them fed on them, and their foes said “We have no penalty to fear,” as retribution for their having sinned against Jehovah the Meadow of Right, their fathers’ hope Jehovah.
8 Migrate from your place in Babylon and come out of the Chaldean country, and be like he-goats in front of a flock; 9 for here I am rousing and bringing up against Babylon a concourse of great nations out of the north country, and they shall take their places against it; by them it shall be taken. His arrows are like a successful champion who will not come back foiled; 10 and Chaldea shall become booty, all who take booty from her shall have their fill, quoth Jehovah. 11* Because you are glad and gay, you pillagers of my estate, because you prance like a threshing heifer and whoop like neighing horses, 12* your mother is put to utmost shame, she who gave birth to you is abashed: there she stands, last of nations, a wilderness of drought and desert. 13 By Jehovah’s wrath she shall not be inhabited, but shall be a desolation altogether; everybody who goes past Babylon shall be aghast and whistle at all the blows that have fallen upon her. 14 Take your stations against Babylon on every side, all you bow-benders; shoot at her, do not spare arrows, because she has sinned against Jehovah. 15* Raise a cheer against her on every side; she has thrown up her hands, her river-walls are down, her walls are demolished; because it is Jehovah’s vengeance, take vengeance on her; do to her as she did. 16 Cut away sower from Babylon, and wielder of sickle at harvesttime; for fear of the ruthless sword they will each turn toward his own people and each take flight to his own country.
17 Israel is a lonely sheep that lions have driven out; first the king of Assyria ate her, and now last King Nebucadressar of Babylon has gnawed up her bones. 18 So Israel’s God Jehovah says, Here I am going to punish the king of Babylon and his country as I punished the king of Assyria, 19 and I will bring Israel back to his pasture and he shall graze over the Carmel and the Bashan and shall take his fill on the highland of Ephraim and the Gilead. 20 In those days and at that time, quoth Jehovah, Israel’s guilt will be searched for and will not be there; and Judah’s sins, and they will not be found; for I will forgive the remnant that I leave.
21* About the country Merathaim. Go up against it and against the inhabitants of Pekod; lay them waste and follow them up giving no quarter, quoth Jehovah, and do just as I commissioned you to. 22 Hark, a sound of battles in the country, and a great catastrophe! 23 how the sledgehammer of all the earth is chopped and broken! how Babylon has become a spectacle of horror among the nations! 24 I set a trap for you, and you were caught too, Babylon, before you knew it; you were found, and seized too, because you had challenged Jehovah. 25 Jehovah has opened his arsenal and brought out the weapons for hostilities, because this is business for the Lord Jehovah of Armies in the Chaldean country. 26* Go into her, open her barns to the last one, pile her up like heaps of grain, destroy her without quarter, let there be no remnant of her. 27 Make war on all her steers; down with them to the slaughter; oho for them, for their day is come, the time for seeing to them. 28 Hark, the voice of fugitives and refugees from Babylonia, reporting in Sion the vengeance of our God Jehovah, the vengeance for his temple! 29 Summon archers to Babylon, all who bend bows; besiege her all round; let there be no survivors; pay her what she has earned, do to her just as she did, because she acted presumptuously against Jehovah, against the Holy One of Israel. 30 So her young men shall fall in her squares, and all her warriors shall be silenced on that day, quoth Jehovah. 31 Have at you, presumption, quoth the Lord Jehovah of Armies! for your day is come, the time for seeing to you. 32* And presumption has stumbled and fallen and has nobody to lift it to its feet; and I will set fire to its cities, fire that shall consume on every side of it.
33 Says Jehovah of Armies, The sons of Israel and the sons of Judah have been victimized together, and all who had carried them off to slavery held on to them, would not let them go. 34 Their Friend in Need is strong; his name is Jehovah of Armies; he will take up their cause so as to give ease to the earth and a shock to the inhabitants of Babylon. 35 Swords against the Chaldeans, quoth Jehovah, and all the inhabitants of Babylon and all its generals and all its wise men! 36 swords against the diviners, and let them show what fools they have made of themselves! swords against its champions, and let them be dismayed! 37 swords against its ponies and its chariots and all the foreign-born population it has within it, and let them become women! swords against its treasuries, and let them be plundered! 38** aridity against its waters, and let them dry out! for it is a country of wall carvings, and they run wild with their objects of terror. 39** So wildcats shall live there with hyenas, and ostriches shall live in it, and it shall not be inhabited again to perpetuity, not be occupied for generation after generation. 40 As with God’s overthrow of Sodom and Ghomorrah and their neighbors, quoth Jehovah, not a man shall live there nor a human being install himself in it. 41 Here comes a people from the north, a great nation and many kings are roused from earth’s recesses, 42 wielding bow and javelin; they are cruel and unfeeling, and the sound of them roars like the sea; on ponies and chariots they are in line like a fire for battle against you, daughter of Babylon. 43 The king of Babylon has heard the report of them and lost heart; distress has seized upon him, pangs like those of a woman in childbirth. 44 Here, like a lion coming up from the Jordan jungle to a permanent pasture, so on a sudden I will set them running from it; and what young man is there to set over it? for who is like me, and who will challenge me, and what shepherd is there that will stand his ground before me? 45 So listen to Jehovah’s policy that he has planned toward Babylon and his ideas that he has thought of toward the Chaldean country: the shepherd boys will drag them off, pasture shall be aghast at them. 46 At the sound of Babylon’s being taken the earth is shaken and a cry is heard among the nations.
51** Says Jehovah, Here I am setting in motion against Babylon and against the inhabitants of Leb-Kamai a blasting wind; 2* and I will send Babylon winnowers who will winnow her and empty out her country because they are against her on all sides on the day of disaster. 3** Let the archer not bend his bow nor hold himself high in his hauberk; and do not spare her young men, destroy all her levies without quarter, 4 and let dying men fall in the Chaldean country and stabbed men in her streets, 5 because Israel and Judah is not widowed from his God Jehovah of Armies; for their country is full of condemnation from the Holy One of Israel. 6 Flee from within Babylon and save your own lives, do not get them cut off for her guilt, because it is a time of vengeance of Jehovah’s, he is paying her off. 7 Babylon has been a gold cup in Jehovah’s hand, intoxicating all the earth; nations drank her wine, therefore nations went wild. 8* Babylon has had a sudden fall and broken her bones; scream over her, get balsam for her wound, maybe she can be healed. 9 We have been treating Babylon, but she does not get well; leave her and let us go to our own countries, because her sentence reaches to the skies and mounts up to the heavens. 10 Jehovah has brought out the rightfulness of our claims; come and let us tell in Sion the story of our God Jehovah’s work.
11 Whet the arrows, grasp the bucklers! Jehovah has roused the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his design is against Babylon to devastate it; for it is Jehovah’s vengeance, the vengeance for his temple. 12* Hoist a signal toward Babylon’s wall; strengthen the watch, set up watchers; get ready the ambushed men, because Jehovah has both planned out and executed what he had threatened against the inhabitants of Babylon. 13* You that are lodged by a great water, you that are great in stores of treasure, the end of you is come, the length to cut you off at. 14 Jehovah of Armies has sworn by himself “I have filled you with humanity like grasshoppers, and they shall answer each other with whoops over you.”
15 He who made the earth by his power, set the world firm by his wisdom, and stretched the sky by his insight, 16 when he collects a drift of water in the sky and brings up vapor from earth’s end, makes lightnings for the rain and brings wind out of his storehouses. 17 All mankind is too stupid to know; every smelter is too ashamed for a statue, for his castings are counterfeit, they have no spirit in them. 18 They are nothings, a joke; at their time of punishment they perish. 19 Not like these is Jacob’s portion; for the Shaper of all is his inheritance, his name is Jehovah. 20 I have you for a hammer, a weapon of battle, and with you I smash nations and with you I wreck kingdoms, 21* and with you I smash pony and rider, and with you I smash chariot and driver, 22 and with you I smash man and woman, and with you I smash old man and child, and with you I smash young man and maiden, 23 and with you I smash shepherd and flock, and with you I smash plowman and team, and with you I smash governors and viceroys. 24 And I will pay back to Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea all the mischief they have done in Sion, before your eyes, quoth Jehovah.
25 Have at you, mountain of ruin, quoth Jehovah, ruiner of all the earth! I will stretch my hand over you and roll you off the cliffs and make you a burnt mountain, 26 and they shall not take from you capstone nor foundation-stone; for you shall be a perpetual desolation, quoth Jehovah. 27* Raise a signal in the earth, blow a ram-horn among the nations, declare against her a war of nations, summon against her the kingdoms of Armenia, Minni, and Ashkenaz, appoint a mustering officer against her, bring up ponies like shedding grasshoppers. 28 Declare against her a war of nations, the king of the Medes, his governors and viceroys and all the country under his dominion.
29 And the earth shook and danced because Jehovah’s plans were carried out against Babylon, to make the country of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant. 30 Babylon’s champions fail to fight, they sit still in the fastnesses; their heroism has evaporated, they have become women. They have set fire to its residences, its bars are broken. 31 Runner meets runner and news-bringer meets news-bringer, running to tell the king of Babylon that his city is every bit taken, 32 and the ferries are seized and they have burned off the pools, and the soldiers are in consternation.
33 For Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says, The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floor at the time when it is being trampled; a little longer, and it will have harvesttime coming. 34** “King Nebucadressar of Babylon has eaten me up, hashed me, set me up like an empty dish, gulped me down like a crocodile, filled his paunch with my delicacies, washed me down; 35* let my outrage and my mangling be upon Babylon,” the dame of Sion shall say; “and my blood on the inhabitants of Chaldea,” Jerusalem shall say. 36 So Jehovah says, Here I am going to take up your cause and execute your vengeance, and dry off her sea and dry out her spring; 37 and Babylon shall become stone-heaps, a retreat of jackals, a desolation and a thing to whistle at, with not an inhabitant. 38 Together they are roaring like two-year-old lions—they snarl like lion cubs. 39** I will set their banquet with drugs and intoxicate them so that they shall sink into unconsciousness and sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, quoth Jehovah. 40 I will bring them down like lambs to slaughtering, like rams with he-goats. 41* How Sheshac is stormed and the praise of all the earth captured! how Babylon has become a thing to stand aghast at among the nations! 42 The sea has come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the uproar of its waves. 43 Her cities have become a desolation, a thirsty desert country; not a man shall live in them and not a human being pass through them. 44* And I will see to Babylon in Babylon, and bring her meals out of her mouth, and nations shall not stream to her again. Babylon’s wall too has fallen. 45* Come out from her, my people, and save your own lives from Jehovah’s anger. 46** And you are not to be discouraged and afraid at the rumoring that is heard in the country: in one year there will come a rumor and after it in another year a rumor, and outrage in the country, ruler upon ruler.
47 Therefore here are days coming when I will have it out with Babylon’s carvings, and all her country shall be put to shame, and all her killed shall fall in her; 48 and sky and earth and everything in them shall jubilate over Babylon, because out of the north ravagers are coming for her, quoth Jehovah. 49* Babylon both was for the falling of the killed of Israel, and at Babylon fell the killed of all the earth. 50 Survivors from the sword, go, do not stand still! at this distance remember Jehovah and bring Jerusalem to mind. 51 We were put to shame because we heard taunts; humiliation covered our faces because strangers had come in over the sanctuaries of Jehovah’s house. 52 So here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when I will have it out with her carvings and in all her country mortally wounded men shall be groaning. 53 Though Babylon runs up to the sky and though she makes the fortifications lofty, from me will ravagers come for her, quoth Jehovah. 54 A sound of an outcry from Babylon and of a great crash from the Chaldean country! 55* for Jehovah is making havoc of Babylon and abolishing loud voices out of her; and their waves shall roar, the din of their noise resounding like that of a great water. 56 For a ravager is coming against her, against Babylon, and her champions will be taken prisoners when their bows are shivered; for Jehovah is a God of retribution, and pay he will.
57 And I will make her captains and her wise men drunk, her governors and her viceroys and her champions, and they shall fall into an eternal sleep and never wake, quoth the King, whose name is Jehovah of Armies. 58 Says Jehovah of Armies, Babylon’s broad wall shall be stripped away and her high gates shall be set on fire; and peoples toil bootlessly, and folk upon folk spends itself to feed fire.
59 The word with which the prophet Jeremiah charged Seraiah the son of Nerijah the son of Mahsejah when he went to Babylon with King Sidkijah of Judah in the year four of his reign, Seraiah being harbinger. 60 Jeremiah wrote the disaster that was to come to Babylon in one screed, all these words that are written regarding Babylon, 61 and Jeremiah said to Seraiah “When you come to Babylon you are to read aloud all aloud all these words 62 and say ‘Jehovah, you have given your word as to this place for extirpating it so that there should be nobody living in it, man or beast, because it is to be an eternal desolation’; 63 and when you have finished reading this document you are to tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates 64 and say ‘Like this shall Babylon sink and never come up, because of the disaster I am bringing upon it.’”
“Spends itself to feed fire”—up to here are the words of Jeremiah.
52* Sidkijah was twenty-one years old at his accession to the throne, and reigned eleven years at Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah, from Libnah. 2 And he did what displeased Jehovah just as Jehojakim had, 3 because it was a matter of Jehovah’s anger at Jerusalem and Judah, till he threw them away from before his face.
And Sidkijah broke his allegiance to the king of Babylon. 4 And in the year nine of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, King Nebucadressar of Babylon came against Jerusalem, he and all his armies, and beleaguered it, and they built a wall of investment around it; 5 and the city was besieged till the year eleven of King Sidkijah 6 in the fourth month, the ninth of the month. And hunger was pressing hard in the city, and there was no bread for the populace; 7 and the city was breached. And all the men of war tried to escape, and went out of the city by night by way of the gate between the two walls along the king’s garden, the city being beset all round by the Chaldeans, and went in the direction of the Rift Valley. 8 And the Chaldean forces pursued the king and overtook Sidkijah on the flats of Jericho, all his forces being scattered away from him, 9 and they captured the king and took him up to Riblah in the country of Hamath to the king of Babylon, and he held a court and tried him. 10 And the king of Babylon cut the throats of Sidkijah’s sons before his eyes, and also cut the throats of all the generals of Judah at Riblah. 11 And he put out Sidkijah’s eyes, and put him in fetters, and the king of Babylon brought him to Babylon and put him in confinement to the day of his death.
12 And in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, it being the year nineteen of King Nebucadressar of Babylon, Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan, of the service of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem 13* and burned down Jehovah’s house and the royal palace and all the houses in Jerusalem; 14 and all the Chaldean forces that the Chief Guardsman had with him pulled down all the walls of Jerusalem all around. 15* And the rest of the people, those who were left of the people in the city, and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, 16 and the rest of the craftsmen, Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan deported; but some of the proletariat Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan left for vineyardists and farmers.
17 And the bronze pillars of Jehovah’s house, and the stands and the bronze sea in Jehovah’s house, the Chaldeans broke up, and carried all the bronze of them away to Babylon; 18* and they took the pots and shovels and snuffers and bowls and pans, and all the bronze articles with which the priests officiated. 19 And the basins and the firepans and the bowls and the pots and the lampstands and the pans and the chalices, gold what was gold and silver what was silver, the Chief Guardsman took. 20* And the pillars two, and the sea one, and the cattle twelve, bronze, that were under the stands which King Solomon had made for Jehovah’s house—there was no weighing the bronze of all these articles. 21 And as for the pillars, twenty-seven feet was the height of one pillar and eighteen feet its girth and three inches the thickness of the metal (hollow); 22* and it had on it a bronze capital, the height of one capital being seven and a half feet, and on the capital, surrounding it, a network and pomegranates, all bronze; and the second pillar had the like, and pomegranates. 23* And of the pomegranates there were ninety-six to the air; of all the pomegranates there were a hundred on the network, surrounding it.
24 And the Chief Guardsman took High Priest Seraiah and Second Priest Sephaniah and the three threshold-keepers, 25* and out of the city he took a eunuch who had had the oversight of the fighting men, and seven of such men having the right of seeing the king’s face as were to be found in the city, and the general’s secretary who had had the summoning of the militia and sixty of the civilians who were found in the city; 26 Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan took them and brought them to Riblah to the king of Babylon, 27 and the king of Babylon struck them dead at Riblah, in the country of Hamath; and Judah was deported off its soil.
28 These were the people that Nebuzaradan deported: in the year seven three thousand and three Judahites; 29 in the year eighteen of Nebucadressar, out of Jerusalem eight hundred and thirty-two souls; 30 in the year twenty-three of Nebucadressar, Chief Guardsman Nebuzaradan deported seven hundred and forty-five Judahite souls; of all the souls there were forty-six hundred.
31 And in the thirty-seventh year of the deportation of King Jehojakin of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth of the month, King Evil-Merodac of Babylon, in the year of his accession to the throne, released King Jehojakin of Judah and took him out of jail 32 and had a friendly conversation with him, and put his throne above the thrones of the kings he had with him at Babylon, 33 and changed his jail clothes, and he ate before him regularly as long as he lived. 34 And his allowance was a regular one given him daily out of the king of Babylon’s supplies as long as he lived, to the day of his death.
MARGINAL NOTES TO JEREMIAH
1:10 Var. and destroy, to build
1:11-12 The words almond and pay attention are spelled alike in Hebrew
1:14 Or of the country
1:17 Or be daunted . . . will daunt
1:18 Var. city and an iron column and a bronze
2:1-2 Var. omits down to Jerusalem. Conj. that verse 4 and two words of verse 5 belong here and not after verse 3
2:16 (sheared you to the scalp) Unc.; susp.; var. known you and done their will on you
2:17 Codd. Will not your . . . do this (but in ungrammatical form)
2:21 Or turned tainted Unc.
2:25 Lit. Check your feet from barefootness and your throat from thirstiness
2:28 Var. adds and they have made burnings to the Baal in as many streets as there are in Jerusalem
2:31 (first part) Susp.
2:34 Lit. On the front flaps of your garments Var. On your hands
2:34 Lit. without it was
3:1 Var. man, will he go back to her again? will
3:1 Var. would not that country
3:2 Lit. an Arab in
3:5 Lit. harbor forever
3:5 Conj.* Those things you have said, and done the bad things, and
3:5 Conj. bad things to the utmost
3:8 Var. saw it, and I saw that forasmuch Var. saw it, because forasmuch
3:12 Lit. hold forever
3:13 Lit. scattered your roads for aliens Unc.; susp.
3:19 Codd. had thought “How am I to count
3:20 Var. so the house of Israel have been faithless to me, quoth
3:21 Lit. the weeping of the supplications of the sons of Israel
3:21 Var. their Holy One Jehovah
3:22 Var. Here we have come to you, because
3:23 Codd. After all, from hills the uproar of mountains It seems that some word is missing, but probably tallness is not the right word
4:3 Var. and to Jerusalem
4:10 Var.* and I said
4:10 Var. ‘You are to have peace’
4:16 Codd.* Notify the nations
4:16 Conj.* nations, they have summoned them hither against
4:16 Conj. leopards are coming
4:18 Lit. this is your wickedness
4:23 Var. a blank; and in
4:27 Conj. and I will make it total
4:28 Var. have spoken and have not repented, have formed a design and will not
4:29 Var. and archer all the city is
4:29 Var. they have gone into the bushes and climbed
4:30 (first words) Ungrammatical in Hebrew; susp.; var. And you, what
5:1 Var. look, and search
5:2 Var. forgive it. And if they say “By Jehovah,” they are
5:7 (first part) Susp.
5:8 (teaser-ponies) Unc.
5:9 Or punish these, quoth
5:10 (first part) Susp.
5:10 Or take off its branches
5:13 Lit. will became air
5:13 Var. Jehovah’s word
5:13 (last six words) Or that for them!
5:14 Codd. Since you say
5:19 Lit. subject to strangers
5:24 Lit. the weeks of the rules of harvest
5:25 Var. our offenses . . . our sins . . . from us
5:26 Codd. miscreants, one peers as bird-catchers crouch
5:27-28 Codd. and rich. They have become fat, they have thought
5:28 Codd. also passed
5:28 Var. a widow’s rights
5:31 Codd. the priests dominate on the same level (lit. parallel to them) Var. the priests shake hands with them
6:2-3 Codd. I have cut off the lovely and dainty one, the daughter of Sion; to her will come
6:4 Lit. the day has turned
6:7 According to a very ancient guess, As a well
6:7 Or (unc.) pour its water
6:9 Var. pass your hand again over as a grape-gatherer does over canes
6:9 (canes) Unc.
6:10 Or speak and protest
6:12 Or against the inhabitants
6:12 Or of the earth
6:15 Lit. among those that fall
6:18 Codd. congregation, to what is in them
6:21 Lit. neighbor and he to whom he is neighbor shall perish
6:23 Or their voice roars
6:23 Var. like a man for
6:27 (fortress) Susp.
6:28 Unc.; var. they are all captains of stubbornness
6:29 Codd.* a smelter has smelted in vain, and bad parts do
7:2 Var. omits all of this verse after Judah
7:3 Codd.* I will cause you to dwell in this place
7:7 Var.* I will cause you to dwell in this place
7:7-8 Var. age. Here
7:13 Var. deeds, quoth Jehovah, and I
7:13 Var. to you, each time early, and you
7:18 Var. for the tracery of the sky
7:20 Var. Therefore Jehovah says
7:21 Var. Says Jehovah, Add
7:24 Var. in designs, in their
7:24 Lit. became back and not face
7:25 Var. sent to them
8:3 Var. this bad clan
8:6 Lit. everyone turning back (or going over again) in their running
8:7 (swallow and crane) Unc.; susp.
8:9 Var. there they have rejected
8:10 Var. adds verses 13-15 of chapter 6 here as last part of verse 10 and verses 11-12
8:13 (last words) Susp.; var. work them Var. omits from and to the end
8:18 Lit. On me are sorrows, on me is my heart sick
8:21 Lit. breaking . . . broken
9:2 Lit. camping-place of travelers on the trail
9:3 Var. as a bow falsely, and not in good faith they dominate
9:4 Lit. Beware each one of his friend
9:4 Var. on your brothers
9:5-6 Codd. tire themselves out going back; extortion upon extortion and fraud upon fraud Var. falsehood; they tire themselves out playing foul; your dwelling is among extortion, fraud upon fraud
9:6 Var. omits quoth Jehovah
9:7 (last half) Susp.
9:8 Var. he speaks falsely with his mouth Conj. the words of their mouths are a net
9:13 Var. had given to them and their fathers
9:14 Var. willful wicked way
9:17 Conj. that Says Jehovah of Armies has been added copying
9:18 Var. over you . . . your eyes . . . your eyelashes
9:19 Codd.* a (or the) country
9:19 Codd. they have thrown our abodes
9:21 Or by our windows
9:21 Var. your windows, got into your land
9:22 Var. range like Conj. drop on the range like
9:25 Lit. all the side-clipped that live in the wilderness
10:2 (first part) Susp.
10:3 Var. superstition, because a piece . . . hatchet, he beautifies with
10:5 Var. puts this verse after verse 4 and adds verses 6-8, for lack of any like you, Jehovah; great are you and great in prowess your name; who will not fear you, King of the nations? for among all the wise of the nations, and in all their empire, where (codd. for lack of) is any like you? they are uniformly (unc.) stupid and silly; the doctrines of superstition are (lit. the education of superstitions is) wooden.
10:11 In the original this verse is in the Aramaic language; the rest of Jeremiah is in Hebrew
10:13 Codd. at the sound of his putting a drift . . . and bringing
10:15 Or at the time for looking them up they get lost
10:16 Var. Shaper of all is he, and Israel the tribe of his estate; his name is Jehovah of Armies
10:17 Var. off the ground, you that are settled down under the siege
10:18 (find) Susp.
10:19 Or is just an illness that I shall bear up under
10:20 Var. my children and my sheep are gone; there is Conj. that this without the words my children and is right
10:25 Var. on clans that
11:4 Or and be my people, and you shall
11:14 Var. for their calamity
11:15 (first words) Unc.; susp.
11:15 Var. will vows and sacred
11:15 (jubilate) Susp.
11:19 Var. let us destroy wood in his bread Conj. let us destroy a tree in its sap
12:3 Var. omits the last words
12:6 Var. country you feel confidence, but how
12:6 (at the top of their voice) Unc.
12:10 Var. trampled my lot, made
12:13 Codd. your crops
13:9-10 Var. this great pride of Judah and of Jerusalem. Those who refuse
13:11 Var. all the house of Israel and all the house of Judah
13:12 (cask, twice) Lit. skin prepared for use as wineskin
13:13 Codd. and the kings
13:13 Var. omits and Judah
13:17 Or over pride
13:21 Susp.
13:27 Lit. and neighings
13:27 Lit. be clean after how much longer?
14:3 Or their bags
14:4 Var. heads, inasmuch as the soil is dismayed (or is broken down) because
14:5 Lit. and leaves, because
14:7 Var. act for the sake of your name
14:9 Var. be like a flustered (Unc.) man, like
14:14 Codd. false vision and soothsaying and trumpery and
14:16 Or pour their disaster
14:17 Var. your eyes
14:17 Or very rankling
15:1 Var. about them; send this people
15:7 Lit. in the gates of the country Var. in the cities of the country
15:7 Var. my people; from their courses they did not turn back. I have
15:9 Var. before their enemies, quoth Jehovah.
15:11-12 Susp.
15:11 (wrested) Unc.
After 15:12 Codd. add 13 Your means and your reserves I will give for plunder in payment for all your sins throughout your territory, 14 and I will enslave you to your enemies in a country you do not know; for there is lighted in my nostrils a fire that will burn forever
16:7 Lit. comfort him for a dead person
17:4 Codd. forgo, and through yourself, your estate Var. be flung off alone out of your estate
17:5 Var. omits Says Jehovah
17:8 Var.* that is not afraid when
17:9 Var. is too deep for any man, and
17:11 Or he will leave it
17:11 Conj. will be an empty bag Conj. will be a leafless branch
17:13 Codd. those who turn aside (var. turn aside from me) will be written down in the country
17:16 Lit. been after you pressing on account of evil (var. with evil)
17:17 Lit. become an instrument of dismay for me
17:19 Codd. the people’s gate
18:7 Lit. I speak of a nation and a kingdom to uproot and pull down and destroy
18:9 Lit. I speak of a nation and a kingdom to build and plant
18:14 Lit. trickling strange waters
18:14 Codd. waters uprooted
18:15 Codd. the old-time trails make them stumble in their courses or* they stumble out of in their courses, the old-time trails Var. they stumble in their courses, the old-time trails
18:16 Lit. without at which
18:17 Var. With an
18:21 Lit. killed off with death
18:23 Codd.* and do not wipe out their sin from
19:4 Or foreignized this place
19:8 Lit. its striking
20:8 Or I call out “Murder! thieves!”
20:16 Conj. that day . . . it . . . it
20:16 Var. in anger and without
20:17 Lit. dispatch me out of womb Var. dispatch me in the womb
21:2 Var. King Nebucadressar of
21:2 Var. do the like of
21:7 Var. of King Nebucadressar of Babylon and of
21:9 Var. goes out and goes over to
21:12 Var. unquenchably because of the wickedness of your practices
21:13 (first part) Susp.
21:14 Var. but I will punish you in accordance with the fruit of your practices, quoth Jehovah, and I will light
22:4 (last part) Susp.
22:6 Codd. a wilderness, cities an uninhabited one, and set Conj. a wilderness, an uninhabited city, and set Conj. a wilderness, an uninhabited country, and set
22:7 Lit. consecrate ravagers against you
22:14 Or with red ocher
22:18 Var. of Judah, They will not
22:18 Var. omits ah, the majesty of him
22:22 Codd.* All your shepherds the wind will shepherd
23:9 Lit. all my bones are floating
23:9 Conj. that the last seven words do not belong here
23:14 Lit. and walking in falsehood
23:15 Var. Jehovah of Armies says of the prophets, Here
23:22 Var. from their wicked course and from the
23:25-26 Conj. “I have dreamed, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.” Is it
23:26 Or Is there anything in the hearts of
23:29 Codd. Is not such my word as (or as a) fire, quoth Jehovah, and as a sledgehammer that breaks away cliffs
23:33 Conj. this people or a priest asks
23:33 loading is the Hebrew word for boding
23:36-38 Var. omits much of these verses
24:10 Var. gave to them and to their fathers
25:1 Var. omits the words in parentheses
25:2 Var. which the prophet Jeremiah uttered about all the people of Judah and all the
25:4 Var. exactly like chapter 7 verses 25-26; conj. that verse 4 does not belong here
25:6 Conj. and do not provoke
25:6 Var. to do you harm
25:7 Var. to me, so as to
25:9 Var. a clan from the north
25:9 Var. all around, and lay them waste and make . . . and a perpetual taunt
25:11 Var. all this country shall become a waste, a desolation, and these nations shall be subject to the king of Babylon seventy
25:12 Var. punish the king of Babylon and that nation, quoth Jehovah, for their guilt, and the Chaldean country, and make
25:13 Var. adds verse 14 For many nations and great kingdoms exploited (conj. will exploit) them too, and I will repay them in accordance with their doings and the work of their hands.
25:15 Codd. cup of wine, of ire,
25:20 Var. and all the kings of the ‘Us country; and all the kings of the Philistine country
25:24 Var. the kings of the Arabs
25:25 Var. and all the kings of Zimri; and all the kings of ‘Elam
25:26 Lit. to each other
25:26 Var. the kingdoms over
25:30 Var. all these words
25:34 (knock you on the head) Unc.
25:38 Codd. He has left his covert like a young lion
26:12 Var. about this house and
26:18 Var. There was Micajah the Morashtite in the time
26:22 Codd. sent men to Egypt, Elnathan the son of ‘Acbor and some men with him to Egypt
26:23 (last words) Unc.; lit. to the graves of the people’s children
27:1 Codd. reign of Jehoiakim
27:6 Var. adds verse 7 And all the nations shall be subject to him and his son and his grandson till the time of his country too comes and many nations and great kingdoms exploit him.
27:12 Var. to him; and his people; and live
27:16 Var. omits I did not send them and goes on 17 Do not listen to them; be subject to the king of Babylon and live; why should this city become a waste? 18 And if they are prophets and have Jehovah’s word with them, let them intercede with Jehovah of Armies that the articles that are left in Jehovah’s house and in the house of the king of Judah and in Jerusalem may not come to Babylon. 19 For Jehovah of Armies says of the pillars and the sea and the bases and the rest of the articles that are left in this city, 20 which King Nebucadnessar of Babylon did not take when he deported Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem— 21 Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies says of the articles that are left in Jehovah’s house and in the house of the king of Judah and in Jerusalem, 22 To Babylon they shall come, and there they shall be till the day that I miss them, quoth Jehovah, and bring them up back to this place.
28:8 Var. war, starvation, and
29:4 Var. who have been deported
29:11 Lit. of welfare and
29:12 Conj. call me and I will go, and you shall pray to me and
29:25 Var. in his name to Priest Sephaniah the son of Maʽaseiah, “Jehovah
29:26 (bilboes) Unc.
30:3 Or bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity Or restore my people Israel and Judah
30:5 Codd. we hear Var. you shall hear
30:13 Conj. There is no cure for the fester, no healing over for you.
30:14 Var. they are not looking out for your health
30:18 Or am restoring Jacob’s tents
30:22 Var. adds verse 22 And I will have them for my people, and they shall have me for their God.
31:1 Var. all the clans of Israel
31:2 (at ease) Unc.
31:3 Var. to it
31:3 (last words) Unc.
31:5 Codd. planters shall plant and Var. makes plant a command
31:5 Lit. and take the first free harvest
31:6 Lit. there is a day
31:7 Conj. whoop on mountaintops
31:12 Lit. their souls will be like
31:14 Lit. with oil or with fat
31:23 Var. Says Jehovah, They
31:23 Or when I restore them
31:24 Conj. and men planting with the mattock
31:26 Or At this
31:26 Or was sweet
31:34 Lit. teach each his friend and each his brother
31:36 Lit. If these laws of nature move from before me
31:40 (terraces) Var. a word of unknown meaning
32:5 Var. om. all after shall be
32:6 Var. And Jeremiah said, Jehovah’s word came to me
32:8 Var. of the guard and said
32:8 Or knew that it had been Jehovah’s word, and
32:11 Var. and took the sealed deed and gave
32:14 Conj. these papers, this deed and the sealed, and put
32:20 Lit. made yourself a name as
32:23 Or do all the
32:24 Lit. in consequence of the swords (or warfare) and the starvation
32:28 Var. Here I am giving this city into the hands of and so forth
32:28 Var. of the king of Babylon
32:30 Var. childhood, for the sons of Israel have been altogether provoking me with the works of their hands, quoth Jehovah. For this city
32:31 Lit. has been to me on my anger (or on my nose) and on my heat
32:36 Var. as to whether the word you here is singular or plural
32:41 Var. And I will take notice of them to do them good
32:44 Codd. of Judah and the cities of the highland
33:4-5 Susp.; codd. pulled down for the ramps and swords: Someone is coming to fight with the Chaldeans and to fill them
33:5 Or of men, As I have struck in anger and in choler and have veiled my face from this city for all its viciousness, here I am
33:6 (gracious disposition) Unc.
33:7 Or will restore Judah and Israel
33:8 Lit. from all their guilt that they have sinned against me, and forgive all their guilt that they have sinned and committed crime against me
33:13 Var. adds 14 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will make good the good promise I have given to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will bring up a new growth of David aright, and he shall do justice and right in the country. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in security; and this is what it will be called, Jehovah-is-Our-Vindication. 17 For Jehovah says, David shall never be without a man sitting on the throne of the house of Israel, 18 and the Levite priests shall not be without a man before me offering burnt-offering and burning grain-offering and making sacrifice through all time. 19 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah 20 “Says Jehovah, If you will cancel my covenant the day and my covenant the night so that there shall not be daytime and nighttime in due order, 21 so will my covenant be canceled with David so that he shall not have a son reigning on his throne, and with the Levite priests my servitors (conj.* priests so that they shall not conduct my services). 22 As the legions of the sky cannot be counted nor the sand of the sea measured, so numerous will I make the descendants of my servant David and the Levites who conduct my services.” 23 And Jehovah’s word came to Jeremiah 24 “Do you not see how this people is talking, saying ‘The two clans that Jehovah had chosen he has repudiated’ and deeming my people too contemptible to count as a nation any longer for them? 25 says Jehovah, If daytime and nighttime are not my covenant, I have not established the laws of heavens and earth, 26 then so will I repudiate the descendants of Jacob (conj. Jesse Conj. that Jacob, and does not belong here at all), and my servant David, so as not to take from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will come back to them (or restore them) and have tenderness for them.”
34:1 Var. his forces and all the kingdoms under his dominion and all the peoples
34:2 Var. This city shall be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it and
34:4-5 Var. says Jehovah, You shall die in peace
34:11 Lit. without the word again
34:16 Lit. without the word again
34:18 Lit. before me, the calf that they cut in two and
35:5 Var. said to them
35:8 Var. omits the son of Recab
35:14 Var. The sons of Jonadab the son Recab have lived up to his word in which
35:14 Var. been drinking; but I have
35:14-15 Var. listened. And I sent you my servants
35:14 Var. omits early each time
35:17 Codd. therefore Israel’s God Jehovah the God of Armies says Var. therefore Jehovah says
36:2 Var. to you about Israel and about Judah
36:8 Var. And Baruc did just as Jeremiah
36:9 Var. year eight of King Jehoiakim, at
36:10 Or Shaphan the secretary
36:13 Var. read out of the book in
36:14 Lit. Take in your hand the
36:20 Lit. without the word palace
36:22 Codd. the brazier burning (with doubtful grammar) Var. the brazier of fire burning
37:3 Var. to Jehovah
37:6-7 Var. to Jeremiah “Says Jehovah
37:13 Lit. when he was in the Benjamin gate
37:21 Lit. all the bread was exhausted out of the city
38:5 Var. hands”; for the king was not able to do anything with them
38:6 Var. omits they let him down by ropes
38:9 Or will have died on the spot with starvation
38:14 (Squire’s Entrance) Susp.
39:3 Conj. that this list was originally more like verse 13
39:10 Or but some of the poorest of the people
39:13-14 Or And he sent Chief (etc.) and they sent and
39:14 (last words) Unc.
39:16 Var. not for good; and you will have them before you on that day; but
40:3 Var. and Jehovah has brought it down on them; and Jehovah has done as he threatened because
40:3 Var. adds and this thing happens to you.
40:8 Var. and Johanan the son of Kareah
40:9 Var. and Gedaliah swore
40:10 Lit. to stand before the
40:11 Lit. had given a remnant to
41:6 Var. to meet them, weeping as he came; and when he met with them he said
41:10 Var. daughters, and all that remained of the people at Mispah, those whom
41:16 Codd. omit whom Ishmaʽel the son of Nethaniah had carried off Var. omits also down to Ahikam
41:17 Var. Kemoham’s
41:17 Lit. to go off to go into Egypt
42:1 Var. of Kareah and Izaniah the son of Hoshaʽiah and all
42:1-2 Lit. approached and said to the prophet
42:2 Var. for us, for this remnant
42:5 Lit. “Jehovah be a true and trusty witness against us if we do not do
42:12 Lit. give you sympathy
43:10 Var. and set his chair
43:10 (awning) Unc.
43:13 Beth-Shemesh probably means On
44:11 Var. toward you for mischief, to exterminate
44:22 Lit. and your country has
44:24 Lit. all Judah that is in Egypt
44:30 Lit. his enemy and the one who
45:1 Or when he wrote down
45:4 Var. planted, and it is with all the country, and are you
46:6 Lit. Let the swift man not
46:9 Codd. the Ludites that use, that bend Conj. that originally one more weapon and one more nation were named here
46:17 The Hebrew words may have been a pun on the name of Pharaoh Hophraʽ
46:23 Lit. unexplorable as it was
46:26 Var. omits verse 26
47:1 Var. Jehovah’s word that came to the prophet Jeremiah to the Philistines before the Pharaoh overthrew Ghaza
47:5 Var. is cut off, the remnant of their vale; how long
47:5 Lit. yourself
47:6 Lit. will you not be
47:7 Var. be still; how are you to be still? But Jehovah has ordered it to Ashkelon and to the seabeach, he has made an appointment for it there.
48:1 (last words) Susp.
48:4 Var. is ruined, her little ones have made an outcry heard. For up
48:6 Var. like ʽAroʽer in the wilderness Var. like a savin-bush in the wilderness
48:9 (wings) Unc.; susp.
48:12 Var. its jars
48:15 Codd. the ravager of Moab and its cities has climbed up, and
48:18 Conj. and sit in filth
48:20 (has gone to pieces) Unc.
48:30 Codd.* quoth Jehovah, and unreliability. His diviners have acted unreliably. Therefore
48:31 Var. he shall sigh
48:33 (last words) Unc.; susp.; codd. tread with whoop, a whoop that is no whoop
48:46 Lit. and your daughters into foreign slavery with a change in the form of the word
49:3 Conj. wail and flog yourselves full of gashes, because
49:4 Var. vales? your vale is flowing, renegade daughter, you that are
49:7 Lit. advice (or policy) has perished from shrewd men
49:8 Codd. at the time when I attend to him
49:19 Codd. because on a sudden
49:19 Codd.* what chosen man
49:19 (challenge) Or come into court against Lit. make an appointment with
49:21 Or the country quakes
49:21 Codd.* quakes, a cry whose sound is heard at Or quakes, its voice is heard as the outcry at
49:23 Var. anxiety in their hearts, they cannot
49:25 (first words) Unc.; susp.
49:30 Lit. without in the desert
49:31 Var. life, quoth Jehovah, one
49:31 Var. no doors, no bolts, no bars
49:32 Lit. become a plunder . . . a booty
49:37 Or break ʽElam down before
50:2 Var. nations and sound it abroad, do not
50:3 Var. in it, man nor beast. In those
50:4 Var. omits quoth Jehovah
50:6 Lit. over turning-back mountains Unc.; susp.
50:11 Var. prance like calves on greensward
50:12 Or a wilderness, a drought, a desert
50:15 Lit. has given her hands
50:21 Or Against the country Merathaim go up, against it and
50:26 (to the last one) Unc.; susp.
50:32 Var. to its chaparrals
50:38 Var.* swords against its waters Conj. swords against its objects of terror
50:38 (dry out) Var.* be put to shame
50:39 Lit. shall live with
50:39 Or jinns shall live there with ghouls
51:1 Leb-Kamai is a cryptogram for the Chaldeans
51:1 (blasting wind) Or baleful spirit
51:2 Var.* send Babylon strangers who
51:3 Lit. the bender
51:3 (hold himself high in his hauberk) Susp.
51:8 Or went wild; Babylon has suddenly dropped and broken. Scream
51:12 (set up watchers) Susp.
51:13 Lit. the cubit ( that is, half-yard) to cut you off at
51:21 Lit. chariot and rider
51:27 (shedding) Unc.; the Hebrew word is chosen to rhyme with the word for mustering officer
51:34 (hashed) Unc.; susp.
51:34 Or with the most delicate parts of me
51:35 Lit. my outrage and my flesh
51:39 Var. In their heat I will set their banquet and intoxicate
51:39 Var. shall be gleeful and fall into a perpetual
51:41 Sheshac is a cryptogram for Babylon
51:44 Lit. brings her swallowings out of
51:45-48 Var. omits these four verses
51:46 Lit. And not to be
51:46 Lit. and there will come in a year the rumor and after it in a year the rumor, and outrage
51:49 Susp.; unc.
51:55 Conj. that several words originally stood between out of her and loud voices and have been lost in copying
52 Different copies vary as to dates in this chapter
52:13 Codd. burned Jehovah’s house and the royal palace and all the houses in Jerusalem and burned down every great house
52:15 (craftsmen) Var. masses
52:18 Lit. with which they officiated
52:20 Conj. that the cattle twelve, bronze, that were under was not originally part of the text
52:22 (last words) Susp.
52:23 (to the air) Unc.
52:25 Or and seven, as many as were to be found in the city, of the men who had had the right of seeing the king’s face