Jeremiah 11

⁶Then the Lord said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying: Hear the words of this covenant and carry them out.

⁵Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.

¹⁷Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people that they would be the Lord’s people. He also made a covenant between the king and the people.

¹³“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your forefathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying:

¹⁴Every seventh year, each of you must free his Hebrew brother who has sold himself to you. He may serve you six years, but then you must let him go free. But your fathers did not listen or incline their ear.

²And he went up to the house of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as the priests and the prophets—all the people small and great—and in their hearing he read all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord.

³So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments, decrees, and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.

¹⁶Then Jehoiada made a covenant between himself and the king and the people that they would be the Lord’s people.

²⁶‘Cursed is he who does not put the words of this law into practice.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’

¹⁹because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.

²⁰The Lord will never be willing to forgive him. Instead, His anger and jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse written in this book will fall upon him. The Lord will blot out his name from under heaven

¹⁵If, however, you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

¹⁶You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

¹⁰All who rely on works of the law are under a curse. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”

¹¹Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.”

¹²I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people.

²⁰Yet the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of His inheritance, as you are today.

²²For when I brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt, I did not merely command them about burnt offerings and sacrifices,

²³but this is what I commanded them: Obey Me, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must walk in all the ways I have commanded you, so that it may go well with you.

⁸I will bring them back to dwell in Jerusalem, where they will be My people, and I will be their faithful and righteous God.”

⁷I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord. They will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with all their heart.

⁵¹For they are Your people and Your inheritance; You brought them out of Egypt, out of the furnace for iron.

⁹the covenant He made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac.

¹⁰He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant:

⁶“Amen!” Jeremiah said. “May the Lord do so! May the Lord fulfill the words you have prophesied, and may He restore the articles of His house and all the exiles back to this place from Babylon.

¹²If you listen to these ordinances and keep them carefully, then the Lord your God will keep His covenant and the loving devotion that He swore to your fathers.

¹³He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will bless the fruit of your womb and the produce of your land—your grain, new wine, and oil, the young of your herds and the lambs of your flocks—in the land that He swore to your fathers to give you.

²⁴But I have told you that you will inherit their land, since I will give it to you as an inheritance—a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the peoples.

⁵And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites—the land He swore to your fathers that He would give you, a land flowing with milk and honey—you shall keep this service in this month.

¹⁶Otherwise, if you speak a blessing in spirit, how can someone who is uninstructed say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying?

²²Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves.

¹³For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous.

²“Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord and proclaim this message: Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the Lord.

¹⁷If you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

¹²Go, proclaim this message toward the north: ‘Return, O faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will no longer look on you with anger, for I am merciful,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will not be angry forever.

²and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Proclaim there the words I speak to you,

¹⁵Again and again the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to His people through His messengers because He had compassion on them and on His dwelling place.

⁹Now listen to their voice; but you must solemnly warn them and show them the manner of the king who will reign over them.”

¹⁷So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

²⁶saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

²¹Pay attention to him and listen to his voice; do not defy him, for he will not forgive rebellion, since My Name is in him.

²²But if you will listen carefully to his voice and do everything I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.

¹³And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and because I have spoken to you again and again but you would not listen, and I have called to you but you would not answer,

²⁴Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.

²⁶Yet they would not listen to Me or incline their ear, but they stiffened their necks and did more evil than their fathers.

¹⁵Again and again I have sent you all My servants the prophets, proclaiming: ‘Turn now, each of you, from your wicked ways, and correct your actions. Do not go after other gods to serve them. Live in the land that I have given to you and your fathers.’ But you have not inclined your ear or listened to Me.

⁸But they rebelled against Me and refused to listen. None of them cast away the abominations before their eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt. So I resolved to pour out My wrath upon them and vent My anger against them in the land of Egypt.

¹⁷At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the Lord, and all the nations will be gathered in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord. They will no longer follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts.

¹⁷But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, but are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them,

¹⁸I declare to you today that you will surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

⁹Like raiders who lie in ambush, so does a band of priests; they murder on the way to Shechem; surely they have committed atrocities.

²⁵The conspiracy of the princes in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing its prey. They devour the people, seize the treasures and precious things, and multiply the widows within her.

²⁶Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they fail to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and take his inheritance.’

³⁹So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

¹⁰Therefore I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners. For from the least of them to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; from prophet to priest, all practice deceit.

¹⁵and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you?” And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.

⁵³So from that day on they plotted to kill Him.

¹⁶And the Lord said to Moses, “You will soon rest with your fathers, and these people will rise up and prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant I have made with them.

⁵⁹For this is what the Lord God says: I will deal with you according to your deeds, since you have despised the oath by breaking the covenant.

¹²Thus they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed after various gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and provoked the Lord to anger,

¹³for they forsook Him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

⁸Then they will not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose heart was not loyal, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

⁹The archers of Ephraim turned back on the day of battle.

¹¹“I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from following Me and has not carried out My instructions.” And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all that night.

⁶Now in the days of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

⁷I thought that after she had done all these things, she would return to Me. But she did not return, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

¹⁸Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”

²⁸Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me.

⁴Then they will cry out to the Lord, but He will not answer them. At that time He will hide His face from them because of the evil they have done.

¹³And just as I had called and they would not listen, so when they called I would not listen, says the Lord of Hosts.

¹⁶that this is what the Lord says: I am about to bring calamity on this place and on its people, according to all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read,

³⁷He will say: “Where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge,

²⁸But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up in your time of trouble and save you if they can; for your gods are as numerous as your cities, O Judah.

²⁰Come, gather together, and draw near, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry idols of wood and pray to a god that cannot save.

¹⁴Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you in your time of trouble.”

²²In the time of his distress, King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the Lord.

¹⁷Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster.

¹⁸But from the time we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been perishing by sword and famine.”

²⁸But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up in your time of trouble and save you if they can; for your gods are as numerous as your cities, O Judah.

¹³The king also desecrated the high places east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

⁴Manasseh also built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put My Name.”

⁵In both courtyards of the house of the Lord, he built altars to all the host of heaven.

¹“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers—and you would return to Me?” declares the Lord.

²“Lift up your eyes to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been violated? You sat beside the highways waiting for your lovers, like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.

⁵They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I never commanded or mentioned, nor did it even enter My mind.

⁹Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known,

¹⁶As for you, do not pray for these people, do not offer a plea or petition on their behalf, and do not beg Me, for I will not listen to you.

¹¹Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring upon them a disaster that they cannot escape. They will cry out to Me, but I will not listen to them.

¹¹Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for the well-being of this people.

¹⁶If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he should ask God, who will give life to those who commit this kind of sin. There is a sin that leads to death; I am not saying he should ask regarding that sin.

¹⁰Now leave Me alone, so that My anger may burn against them and consume them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

¹⁸If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

¹⁴from those who enjoy doing evil and rejoice in the twistedness of evil,

¹⁵To the pure, all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

¹Then the Lord said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel should stand before Me, My heart would not go out to this people. Send them from My presence, and let them go!

⁸But look, you keep trusting in deceptive words to no avail.

⁹Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known,

¹⁶As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil.

¹⁴“Return, O faithless children,” declares the Lord, “for I am your master, and I will take you—one from a city and two from a family—and bring you to Zion.

¹⁷Now if some branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root,

¹⁸do not boast over those branches. If you do, remember this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.

⁸But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in the loving devotion of God forever and ever.

¹¹When its limbs are dry, they are broken off. Women come and use them for kindling; for this is a people without understanding. Therefore their Maker has no compassion on them, and their Creator shows them no favor.

¹⁶Your vine has been cut down and burned; they perish at the rebuke of Your countenance.

¹⁰The axe lies ready at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

⁴⁷Say to the forest of the Negev: Hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord God says: I am about to ignite in you a fire, and it will devour all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and by it every face from south to north will be scorched.

⁴⁸Then all people will see that I, the Lord, have kindled it; it will not be quenched.”

²He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour!

²You planted them, and they have taken root. They have grown and produced fruit. You are ever on their lips, but far from their hearts.

²¹I had planted you like a choice vine from the very best seed. How could you turn yourself before Me into a rotten, wild vine?

¹⁵“This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and on all the villages around it every disaster I have pronounced against them, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed My words.’”

⁸But if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent of the disaster I had planned to bring.

¹⁰‘If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I will relent of the disaster I have brought upon you.

⁹Then the man of God sent word to the king of Israel: “Be careful not to pass by this place, for the Arameans are going down there.”

¹⁰So the king of Israel sent word to the place the man of God had pointed out. Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that he was on his guard in such places.

¹¹Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as Your servant has heard? O Lord, God of Israel, please tell Your servant.” “He will,” said the Lord.

¹²So David asked, “Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” “They will,” said the Lord.

⁶“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing—to drive Me far from My sanctuary? Yet you will see even greater abominations.”

⁷Then He brought me to the entrance to the court, and I looked and saw a hole in the wall.

¹⁹For I was like a gentle lamb led to slaughter; I did not know that they had plotted against me: “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be remembered no more.”

¹⁴the king of Aram sent horses, chariots, and a great army. They went there by night and surrounded the city.

¹⁵When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early in the morning, behold, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. So he asked Elisha, “Oh, my master, what are we to do?”

⁷However, if my falsehood accentuates God’s truthfulness, to the increase of His glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?

¹⁰For I have heard the whispering of many: “Terror is on every side! Report him; let us report him!” All my trusted friends watch for my fall: “Perhaps he will be deceived so that we may prevail against him and take our vengeance upon him.”

⁷He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.

⁸By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and who can recount His descendants? For He was cut off from the land of the living; He was stricken for the transgression of My people.

⁴saying, “Come, let us erase them as a nation; may the name of Israel be remembered no more.”

¹⁸Then some said, “Come, let us make plans against Jeremiah, for the law will never be lost to the priest, nor counsel to the wise, nor an oracle to the prophet. Come, let us denounce him and pay no heed to any of his words.”

¹³No man can know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living.

¹³For I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side. They conspire against me and plot to take my life.

¹²O Lord of Hosts, who examines the righteous, who sees the heart and mind, let me see Your vengeance upon them, for to You I have committed my cause.

¹⁰I, the Lord, search the heart; I examine the mind to reward a man according to his way, by what his deeds deserve.

⁹Put an end to the evil of the wicked, but establish the righteous, O righteous God who searches hearts and minds.

⁷But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the Lord does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart.”

²³Then I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am the One who searches minds and hearts, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

¹⁸Let my persecutors be put to shame, but do not let me be put to shame. Let them be terrified, but do not let me be terrified. Bring upon them the day of disaster and shatter them with double destruction.

¹⁰For I have heard the whispering of many: “Terror is on every side! Report him; let us report him!” All my trusted friends watch for my fall: “Perhaps he will be deceived so that we may prevail against him and take our vengeance upon him.”

¹²“But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

⁵“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a peaceful land, how will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?

⁶Even your brothers—your own father’s household—even they have betrayed you; even they have cried aloud against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you.

³³Nevertheless, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for it is not admissible for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem.

³⁴O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!

¹⁰They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

⁶For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies are the members of his own household.

²¹Therefore, hand their children over to famine; pour out the power of the sword upon them. Let their wives become childless and widowed; let their husbands be slain by disease, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.

¹⁵who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and drove us out as well. They are displeasing to God and hostile to all men,

¹⁶hindering us from telling the Gentiles how they may be saved. As a result, they continue to heap up their sins to full capacity; the utmost wrath has come upon them.

¹⁷So He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who put their young men to the sword in the sanctuary, sparing neither young men nor young women, neither elderly nor infirm. God gave them all into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar,

²¹Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion.

²¹For death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the town squares.

¹²“Therefore their path will become slick; they will be driven away into the darkness and fall into it. For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment,” declares the Lord.

²⁷Kill all her young bulls; let them go down to the slaughter. Woe to them, for their day has come—the time of their punishment.

⁴⁴They will level you to the ground—you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

⁴The best of them is like a brier; the most upright is sharper than a hedge of thorns. The day for your watchmen has come, the day of your visitation. Now is the time of their confusion.

⁷The days of punishment have come; the days of retribution have arrived—let Israel know it. The prophet is called a fool, and the inspired man insane, because of the greatness of your iniquity and hostility.

²⁷I am watching over them for harm and not for good, and every man of Judah who is in the land of Egypt will meet his end by sword or famine, until they are finished off.