Jeremiah 18

¹On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets.

⁶“Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

²²But if they had stood in My council, they would have proclaimed My words to My people and turned them back from their evil ways and deeds.”

¹This is what the Lord says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take some of the elders of the people and leaders of the priests,

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

¹“Now you, son of man, take a brick, place it before you, and draw on it the city of Jerusalem.

²Then lay siege against it: Construct a siege wall, build a ramp to it, set up camps against it, and place battering rams around it on all sides.

¹This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.”

¹⁴You are My friends if you do what I command you.

³Jonah, however, got up to flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard to sail for Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

¹⁹So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

²⁰But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”

²¹Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

⁶“O house of Israel, declares the Lord, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

⁹Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does the clay ask the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?

⁸But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand.

²⁰But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”

²¹Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

⁴But the vessel that he was shaping from the clay became flawed in his hand; so he formed it into another vessel, as it seemed best for him to do.

⁹Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does the clay ask the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?

¹⁵Do I not have the right to do as I please with what is mine? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

²³And you, O king, saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass him by.’

¹⁰See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant.”

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.

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.

⁴On the first day of his journey, Jonah set out into the city and proclaimed, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!”

⁸Surely the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth. Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the Lord.

⁹behold, I will summon all the families of the north, declares the Lord, and I will send for My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land, against its residents, and against all the surrounding nations. So I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and contempt, an everlasting desolation.

¹⁰Moreover, I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp.

²¹But if the wicked man turns from all the sins he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die.

¹³So now, correct your ways and deeds, and obey the voice of the Lord your God, so that He might relent of the disaster He has pronounced against you.

⁹Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.”

¹⁰When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.

⁸How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

³Perhaps they will listen and turn—each from his evil way of life—so that I may relent of the disaster I am planning to bring upon them because of the evil of their deeds.

¹³So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.

¹⁴Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him—grain and drink offerings for the Lord your God.

²⁸Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, to demolish, destroy, and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord.

¹¹“In that day I will restore the fallen tent of David. I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old,

¹²that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear My name,” declares the Lord, who will do this.

¹⁰See, I have appointed you today over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and plant.”

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.”

¹⁸This is what the Lord says: “I will restore the fortunes of Jacob’s tents and have compassion on his dwellings. And the city will be rebuilt on her own ruins, and the palace will stand in its rightful place.

³⁸“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this city will be rebuilt for Me, from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.

³⁰Therefore, the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father would walk before Me forever. But now the Lord declares: Far be it from Me! For I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disdained.

¹⁸If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he will die for it.

¹³“You have acted foolishly,” Samuel declared. “You have not kept the command that the Lord your God gave you; if you had, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.

²⁴But if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and practices iniquity, committing the same abominations as the wicked, will he live? None of the righteous acts he did will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness and sin he has committed, he will die.

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.

⁵But those who turn to crooked ways the Lord will banish with the evildoers. Peace be upon Israel.

¹³Yet through all His prophets and seers, the Lord warned Israel and Judah, saying, “Turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments and statutes, according to the entire Law that I commanded your fathers and delivered to you through My servants the prophets.”

⁶Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.

⁷Let the wicked man forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.

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.

³Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Correct your ways and deeds, and I will let you live in this place.

¹⁶Wash and cleanse yourselves. Remove your evil deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil!

¹⁷Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow.”

⁵The prophets told you, ‘Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways and deeds, and you can dwell in the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers forever and ever.

²⁵You should have kept your feet from going bare and your throat from being thirsty. But you said, ‘It is hopeless! For I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’

¹²And you have done more evil than your fathers. See how each of you follows the stubbornness of his evil heart instead of obeying Me.

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.

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.

¹⁰You are wearied by your many journeys, but you did not say, “There is no hope!” You found renewal of your strength; therefore you did not grow weak.

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.

³⁰A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land.

⁸Who has heard of such as this? Who has seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be delivered in an instant? Yet as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.

¹⁴And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns his back on wickedness. They are all like Sodom to Me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah.”

¹⁰In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing: Ephraim practices prostitution there, and Israel is defiled.

¹⁰Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and take a look; send to Kedar and consider carefully; see if there has ever been anything like this:

¹¹Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols.

⁴Again I will build you, and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out in joyful dancing.

⁶⁸Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.

¹⁶This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths: ‘Where is the good way?’ Then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it!’

³²Does a maiden forget her jewelry or a bride her wedding sash? Yet My people have forgotten Me for days without number.

¹⁴And it will be said, “Build it up, build it up, prepare the way, take every obstacle out of the way of My people.”

²But the more I called Israel, the farther they departed from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.

⁸But you have departed from the way, and your instruction has caused many to stumble. You have violated the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord of Hosts.

¹³“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

⁷All who see me mock me; they sneer and shake their heads:

⁹behold, I will summon all the families of the north, declares the Lord, and I will send for My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land, against its residents, and against all the surrounding nations. So I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and contempt, an everlasting desolation.

⁸I will make this city a desolation and an object of scorn. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff at all her wounds.

¹⁶You have kept the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab’s house; you have followed their counsel. Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of contempt; you will bear the scorn of the nations.”

¹³Because of the wrath of the Lord, she will not be inhabited; she will become completely desolate. All who pass through Babylon will be horrified and will hiss at all her wounds.

¹³For by Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, that Bozrah will become a desolation, a disgrace, a ruin, and a curse, and all her cities will be in ruins forever.”

²⁴“I will scatter you like chaff driven by the desert wind.

²⁷say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’

¹⁵Although he flourishes among his brothers, an east wind will come—a wind from the Lord rising up from the desert. His fountain will fail, and his spring will run dry. The wind will plunder his treasury of every precious article.

²¹The east wind carries him away, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place.

⁷With a wind from the east You wrecked the ships of Tarshish.

²¹Even the mercenaries among her are like fattened calves. They too will turn back; together they will flee, they will not stand their ground, for the day of calamity is coming upon them—the time of their punishment.

²Your tongue devises destruction like a sharpened razor, O worker of deceit.

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.”

⁷For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts.

¹¹Now therefore, tell the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem that this is what the Lord says: ‘Behold, I am planning a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, each of you, from your evil ways, and correct your ways and deeds.’

¹³then you are to tell them that this is what the Lord says: ‘I am going to fill with drunkenness all who live in this land—the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the people of Jerusalem.

¹⁴I will smash them against one another, fathers and sons alike, declares the Lord. I will allow no mercy or pity or compassion to keep Me from destroying them.’”

¹²They have lied about the Lord and said: “He will not do anything; harm will not come to us; we will not see sword or famine.

¹³The prophets are but wind, for the word is not in them. So let their own predictions befall them.”

⁹For they were all trying to frighten us, saying, “Their hands will be weakened in the work, and it will never be finished.” But now, my God, strengthen my hands.

¹⁶But I call to God, and the Lord saves me.

¹⁷Morning, noon, and night, I cry out in distress, and He hears my voice.

⁸Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will arise; though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.

²⁸Though they curse, You will bless. When they rise up, they will be put to shame, but Your servant will rejoice.

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.

¹⁶Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God.

⁷For without cause they laid their net for me; without reason they dug a pit for my soul.

⁶They spread a net for my feet; my soul was despondent. They dug a pit before me, but they themselves have fallen into it! Selah

²³So He said He would destroy them—had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.

¹²They repay me evil for good, to the bereavement of my soul.

¹⁷and said to David, “You are more righteous than I, for you have rewarded me with good, though I have rewarded you with evil.

¹⁸And you have declared this day how you have treated me well, for when the Lord delivered me into your hand, you did not kill me.

⁴In return for my love they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer.

⁵They repay me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

⁹May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

¹⁰May his children wander as beggars, seeking sustenance far from their ruined homes.

²⁵Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, terror will strike the young man and the young woman, the infant and the gray-haired man.

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.

³For this is what the Lord says concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, and the mothers who bore them, and the fathers who fathered them in this land:

⁴“They will die from deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried, but will lie like dung on the ground. They will be finished off by sword and famine, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the air and beasts of the earth.”

¹⁰“I sent plagues among you like those of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the Lord.

³We have become fatherless orphans; our mothers are widows.

²⁶O daughter of my people, dress yourselves in sackcloth and roll in ashes. Mourn with bitter wailing, as you would for an only son, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

⁵The proud hide a snare for me; the cords of their net are spread along the path, and lures are set out for me. Selah

¹⁰On that day,” declares the Lord, “a cry will go up from the Fish Gate, a wail from the Second District, and a loud crashing from the hills.

¹¹Wail, O dwellers of the Hollow, for all your merchants will be silenced; all who weigh out silver will be cut off.

³⁴Wail, you shepherds, and cry out; roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock. For the days of your slaughter have come; you will fall and be shattered like fine pottery.

³⁵Flight will evade the shepherds, and escape will elude the leaders of the flock.

³⁰Cry aloud, O Daughter of Gallim! Listen, O Laishah! O wretched Anathoth!

¹⁶a day of horn blast and battle cry against the fortified cities, and against the high corner towers.

⁴May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame; may those who plan to harm me be driven back and confounded.

²²May their table become a snare; may it be a retribution and a trap.

²³May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.

¹⁴May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and the sin of his mother never be blotted out.

¹⁵May their sins always remain before the Lord, that He may cut off their memory from the earth.

⁹So mankind is brought low, and man is humbled—do not forgive them!

⁴Hear us, O God, for we are despised. Turn their scorn back upon their own heads, and let them be taken as plunder to a land of captivity.

⁵Do not cover up their iniquity or let their sin be blotted out from Your sight, for they have provoked the builders.

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.”