Jeremiah 9
1 If only I had a travelers’ lodging in the desert, so I could leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors.
2 They draw their tongues like a bow to shoot lies, and they do not grow strong in the land through faithfulness. They go from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the LORD.
3 Let everyone beware of their neighbor, and trust no brother, for every brother is a deceiver, and every neighbor goes about slandering.
4 Everyone mocks their neighbor, and no one speaks the truth. They have trained their tongues to speak lies; they wear themselves out doing evil.
5 You live surrounded by deceit; in their deceit they refuse to know me, says the LORD.
6 Therefore, this is what the LORD of Armies says: “I am going to refine them and test them. What else can I do, because of my people’s daughter?
7 Their tongue is a sharpened arrow; it speaks deceit. With their mouths, they each speak peaceably to their neighbors, but inside they set an ambush.
8 Should I not punish them for these things? says the LORD. Should I not take vengeance on a nation like this?”
9 I will raise weeping and wailing over the mountains, and a funeral song over the desert pastures, for they have been burned, and no one passes through them; the sound of livestock is not heard. From the birds of the sky to the animals, they have all fled and gone away.
10 I will make Jerusalem a heap of stones, a den for jackals; I will make the towns of Judah desolate, with no one living in them.
11 Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the LORD spoken, so that they may declare it? Why has the land been destroyed, burned like a desert, with no one passing through?
12 The LORD said, “It is because they abandoned my law, which I set before them, and did not listen to my voice or walk in it.
13 They followed the stubbornness of their own hearts and the Baals, as their fathers taught them.”
14 Therefore, this is what the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “I am going to feed this people wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink.
15 I will scatter them among nations unknown to them and their fathers, and I will send the sword after them until I have finished them off.”
16 This is what the LORD of Armies says: “Pay attention and summon the women who mourn, so they may come; send for the skilled women, so they may come.
17 Let them hurry and raise a lament for us, so our eyes may stream with tears and our eyelids run with water.
18 For a voice of lament is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! We are deeply ashamed, because we have left the land, because they have torn down our homes.’
19 Listen, women, to the word of the LORD; let your ears receive the word from his mouth. Teach your daughters a lament, and each woman her companion a funeral song.
20 For death has climbed in through our windows and entered our palaces, to wipe the children from the streets and the young men from the squares.”
21 Speak this declaration of the LORD: “The corpses of people will fall like dung on the open field, like a sheaf behind the reaper, with no one to gather it.”
22 This is what the LORD says: “Let the wise not boast in their wisdom, let the warrior not boast in his strength, let the rich not boast in his wealth.
23 But whoever boasts should boast in this: in understanding and knowing me, for I am the LORD, who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness on earth; for these are what I delight in, says the LORD.”
24 Days are coming, says the LORD, when I will punish everyone who is circumcised yet uncircumcised:
25 Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all who cut the hair at their temples, who live in the desert. For all the nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.
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