Jeremiah 12

¹⁵So now we call the arrogant blessed. Not only do evildoers prosper, they even test God and escape.’”

⁷that though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.

¹Of David. Do not fret over those who do evil; do not envy those who do wrong.

³For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

⁴They have no struggle in their death; their bodies are well-fed.

³⁵I have seen a wicked, ruthless man flourishing like a well-rooted native tree,

⁴Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.

¹³Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

¹⁶They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.

⁸‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.

¹⁷The Lord of Hosts, who planted you, has decreed disaster against you on account of the evil that the house of Israel and the house of Judah have brought upon themselves, provoking Me to anger by burning incense to Baal.”

⁴Thus Jeremiah was to say to Baruch: “This is what the Lord says: Throughout the land I will demolish what I have built and uproot what I have planted.

⁵He took some of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil; he placed it by abundant waters and set it out like a willow.

⁶It sprouted and became a spreading vine, low in height, with branches turned toward him; yet its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine and yielded branches and sent out shoots.

³“Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before You faithfully and with wholehearted devotion; I have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

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.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. O Lord, You have searched me and known me.

²You know when I sit and when I rise; You understand my thoughts from afar.

⁵You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter.

³You have tried my heart; You have visited me in the night. You have tested me and found no evil; I have resolved not to sin with my mouth.

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.

¹⁰I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

³⁴and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.

²⁵I looked, and no man was left; all the birds of the air had fled.

³Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.

¹⁰For the land is full of adulterers—because of the curse, the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness have dried up—their course is evil and their power is misused.

²⁰Therefore this is what the Lord God says: Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place, on man and beast, on the trees of the field and the produce of the land, and it will burn and not be extinguished.

¹²Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you, as though something strange were happening to you.

¹⁰If you faint in the day of distress, how small is your strength!

³Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

⁴In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

¹For the choirmaster. To the tune of “Lilies.” Of David. Save me, O God, for the waters are up to my neck.

²I have sunk into the miry depths, where there is no footing; I have drifted into deep waters, where the flood engulfs me.

¹⁹Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thickets of the Jordan to the watered pasture. For in an instant I will chase Edom from her land. Who is the chosen one I will appoint for this? For who is like Me, and who can challenge Me? What shepherd can stand against Me?”

⁷Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and waves have rolled over me.

²⁵When he speaks graciously, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart.

²They lie to one another; they speak with flattering lips and a double heart.

⁴“Let everyone guard against his neighbor; do not trust any brother, for every brother deals craftily, and every friend spreads slander.

⁵Do not rely on a friend; do not trust in a companion. Seal the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms.

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.

⁴When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.

⁵Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.

²¹Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death.

⁶For You have abandoned Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with influences from the east; they are soothsayers like the Philistines; they strike hands with the children of foreigners.

⁵⁹On hearing it, God was furious and rejected Israel completely.

⁶⁰He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had pitched among men.

¹⁵What right has My beloved in My house, having carried out so many evil schemes? Can consecrated meat avert your doom? When you are wicked, then you rejoice.

¹⁵All their evil appears at Gilgal, for there I hated them. I will drive them from My house for the wickedness of their deeds. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious.

¹How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.

²Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes.

²¹Tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord God says: ‘I am about to desecrate My sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, and the delight of your soul. And the sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword.’

⁸The Lord God has sworn by Himself—the Lord, the God of Hosts, has declared: “I abhor Jacob’s pride and detest his citadels, so I will deliver up the city and everything in it.”

¹⁵All their evil appears at Gilgal, for there I hated them. I will drive them from My house for the wickedness of their deeds. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious.

⁸And in one month I dismissed three shepherds. My soul grew impatient with the flock, and their souls also detested me.

¹⁵The young lions have roared at him; they have sounded their voices. They have laid waste his land; his cities lie in ruins, without inhabitant.

³⁸They will roar together like young lions; they will growl like lion cubs.

⁹Come, all you beasts of the field; eat greedily, all you beasts of the forest.

³³The corpses of this people will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to scare them away.

²And the Lord sent Chaldean, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Jehoiakim in order to destroy Judah, according to the word that the Lord had spoken through His servants the prophets.

¹⁷Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds flying overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God,

¹⁸so that you may eat the flesh of kings and commanders and mighty men, of horses and riders, of everyone slave and free, small and great.”

²²Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Lord God says: ‘I will incite your lovers against you, those from whom you turned away in disgust. And I will bring them against you from every side—

²³the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them—all desirable young men, governors and commanders, officers and men of renown, mounted on horses.

³⁶This is what the Lord God says: Because you poured out your wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity with your lovers and with all your detestable idols, and because of the blood of your children which you gave to them,

³⁷therefore I will surely gather all the lovers with whom you found pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and expose you before them, and they will see you completely naked.

¹“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” declares the Lord.

¹I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

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!

¹⁸For a short while Your people possessed Your holy place, but our enemies have trampled Your sanctuary.

⁸You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it.

⁹You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

¹⁹Then I said, ‘How I long to make you My sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations!’ I thought you would call Me ‘Father’ and never turn away from following Me.

³Shepherds and their flocks will come against her; they will pitch their tents all around her, each tending his own portion:

²⁵So He poured out on them His furious anger and the fierceness of battle. It enveloped them in flames, but they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart.

¹⁰For the land is full of adulterers—because of the curse, the land mourns and the pastures of the wilderness have dried up—their course is evil and their power is misused.

²“Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.

⁴How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away, for the people have said, “He cannot see what our end will be.”

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?

⁵“Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted?

¹How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow. The princess of the provinces has become a slave.

²She weeps aloud in the night, with tears upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

⁶‘Alas, O sword of the Lord, how long until you rest? Return to your sheath; cease and be still!’

⁴Though they are driven by their enemies into captivity, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix My eyes upon them for harm and not for good.”

¹⁷Or if I bring a sword against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through it,’ so that I cut off from it both man and beast,

⁶The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood. It drips with fat—with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

¹⁶And He has a name written on His robe and on His thigh: KING OF KINGS AND Lord OF LORDS.

¹⁷Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds flying overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God,

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.

⁶You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but never get warm. You earn wages to put into a bag pierced through.”

³⁸You will sow much seed in the field but harvest little, because the locusts will consume it.

¹⁶then this is what I will do to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting disease, and fever that will destroy your sight and drain your life. You will sow your seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it.

¹⁵You will sow but not reap; you will press olives but not anoint yourselves with oil; you will tread grapes but not drink the wine.

²Why spend money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of foods.

³⁷The peaceful meadows have been silenced because of the Lord’s burning anger.

³⁸He has left His den like a lion, for their land has been made a desolation by the sword of the oppressor, and because of the fierce anger of the Lord.

¹⁸In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave to your fathers as an inheritance.

⁸For this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “After His Glory has sent Me against the nations that have plundered you—for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye—

⁸“I have heard the reproach of Moab and the insults of the Ammonites, who have taunted My people and threatened their borders.

⁹Therefore, as surely as I live,” declares the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, “surely Moab will be like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah—a place of weeds and salt pits, a perpetual wasteland. The remnant of My people will plunder them; the remainder of My nation will dispossess them.”

⁷Concerning Edom, this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Is there no longer wisdom in Teman? Has counsel perished from the prudent? Has their wisdom decayed?

⁶I will strengthen the house of Judah and save the house of Joseph. I will restore them because I have compassion on them, and they will be as though I had not rejected them. For I am the Lord their God, and I will answer them.

⁷Ephraim will be like a mighty man, and their hearts will be glad as with wine. Their children will see it and be joyful; their hearts will rejoice in the Lord.

¹⁵but I am fiercely angry with the nations that are at ease. For I was a little angry, but they have added to the calamity.’

⁶Yet afterward I will restore the Ammonites from captivity,” declares the Lord.

⁴⁷Yet in the latter days I will restore Moab from captivity,” declares the Lord. Here ends the judgment on Moab.

³⁹“Yet in the last days, I will restore Elam from captivity,” declares the Lord.

³then He will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the Lord your God has scattered you.

¹⁴I will restore My people Israel from captivity; they will rebuild and inhabit the ruined cities. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.

¹⁷And at the end of seventy years, the Lord will restore Tyre. Then she will return to hire as a prostitute and sell herself to all the kingdoms on the face of the earth.

¹⁸Yet her profits and wages will be set apart to the Lord; they will not be stored or saved, for her profit will go to those who live before the Lord, for abundant food and fine clothing.

²and if you can swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ in truth, in justice, and in righteousness, then the nations will be blessed by Him, and in Him they will glory.”

⁷So you are not to associate with these nations that remain among you. You must not call on the names of their gods or swear by them, and you must not serve them or bow down to them.

⁵those who bow on the rooftops to worship the host of heaven, those who bow down and swear by the Lord but also swear by Milcom,

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.

¹¹“On that day many nations will join themselves to the Lord, and they will become My people. I will dwell among you, and you will know that the Lord of Hosts has sent Me to you.

²⁰You are to fear the Lord your God and serve Him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name.

²¹He is your praise and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome wonders that your eyes have seen.

¹²For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly destroyed.

⁸Ask Me, and I will make the nations Your inheritance, the ends of the earth Your possession.

⁹You will break them with an iron scepter; You will shatter them like pottery.”

⁴The first beast was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man and given the mind of a man.

⁵Suddenly another beast appeared, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. So it was told, ‘Get up and gorge yourself on flesh!’

¹⁴This is what the Lord says: “As for all My evil neighbors who attack the inheritance that I bequeathed to My people Israel, I am about to uproot them from their land, and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them.

¹⁵But after I have uprooted them, I will once again have compassion on them and return each one to his inheritance and to his land.

¹⁶Then all the survivors from the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

¹⁷And should any of the families of the earth not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, then the rain will not fall on them.

⁷At any time I might announce that a nation or kingdom will be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed.