Jeremiah 9

¹⁷But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride. My eyes will overflow with tears, because the Lord’s flock has been taken captive.

⁴Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

¹¹My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

²¹For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am crushed. I mourn; horror has gripped me.

²²Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?

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.

³My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”

⁷“Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken Me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery and assembled at the houses of prostitutes.

⁸They are well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing after his neighbor’s wife.

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.

²Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another.

⁴They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by a baker who needs not stoke the fire from the kneading to the rising of the dough.

¹Righteous are You, O Lord, when I plead before You. Yet about Your judgments I wish to contend with You: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?

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.

²²“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good.”

⁸Their tongues are deadly arrows; they speak deception. With his mouth a man speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he sets a trap for him.

¹⁰After that whole generation had also been gathered to their fathers, another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works that He had done for Israel.

¹³rebelling and denying the Lord, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart.

¹⁴So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.

¹³“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The venom of vipers is on their lips.”

¹²Now the sons of Eli were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord

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.

²⁴A hateful man disguises himself with his speech, but he lays up deceit in his heart.

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.

³May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue.

²⁸All are hardened rebels, walking around as slanderers. They are bronze and iron; all of them are corrupt.

¹⁸The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.

¹⁶You must not go about spreading slander among your people. You must not endanger the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord.

¹³Is it not indeed from the Lord of Hosts that the labor of the people only feeds the fire, and the nations weary themselves in vain?

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.

¹²For the wealthy of the city are full of violence, and its residents speak lies; their tongues are deceitful in their mouths.

⁵For your iniquity instructs your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.

¹³rebelling and denying the Lord, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart.

¹⁴So justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.

¹⁶For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; they are deprived of slumber until they make someone fall.

¹⁰These evil people, who refuse to listen to My words, who follow the stubbornness of their own hearts, and who go after other gods to serve and worship them, they will be like this loincloth—of no use at all.

⁶My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

²⁸Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

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.”

²⁴Because you refused my call, and no one took my outstretched hand,

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.”

²⁵I will turn My hand against you; I will thoroughly purge your dross; I will remove all your impurities.

³And He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

²⁷“I have appointed you to examine My people like ore, so you may know and try their ways.

¹⁰See, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

⁹This third I will bring through the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are My people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’”

⁷so that the proven character of your faith—more precious than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

³Do not drag me away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors while malice is in their hearts.

²⁴A hateful man disguises himself with his speech, but he lays up deceit in his heart.

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

³who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their bitter words like arrows,

⁴ambushing the innocent in seclusion, shooting suddenly, without fear.

³What will He do to you, and what will be added to you, O deceitful tongue?

³“They bend their tongues like bows; lies prevail over truth in the land. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not take Me into account,” declares the Lord.

⁴My soul is among the lions; I lie down with ravenous beasts—with men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

²⁹Should I not punish them for these things?” declares the Lord. “Should I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?

⁹Should I not punish them for these things?” declares the Lord. “Should I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?

²⁴Therefore the Lord God of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: “Ah, I will be relieved of My foes and avenge Myself on My enemies.

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.”

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.

¹¹No foot of man or beast will pass through, and it will be uninhabited for forty years.

²⁸I will make the land a desolate waste, and the pride of her strength will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will become desolate, so that no one will pass through.

²⁹Cut off your hair and throw it away. Raise up a lamentation on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’

¹⁰Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.

²Indeed, You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin. The fortress of strangers is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.

²²Listen! The sound of a report is coming—a great commotion from the land to the north. It will make the cities of Judah a desolation, a haunt for jackals.

¹³Her towers will be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She will become a haunt for jackals, an abode for ostriches.

²²Hyenas will howl in her fortresses and jackals in her luxurious palaces. Babylon’s time is at hand, and her days will not be prolonged.

³⁷Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals, an object of horror and scorn, without inhabitant.

¹¹And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.

⁹Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous walk in them but the rebellious stumble in them.

⁴³Let him who is wise pay heed to these things and consider the loving devotion of the Lord.

²⁹If only they were wise, they would understand it; they would comprehend their fate.

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

³Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near.

²²Then the generation to come—your sons who follow you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land—will see the plagues of the land and the sicknesses the Lord has inflicted on it.

²³All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His fierce anger.

⁹Then people will reply, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’”

¹⁹But if you turn away and forsake the statutes and commandments I have set before you, and if you go off to serve and worship other gods,

¹⁰And now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commandments

⁴Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law resist them.

⁵³Rage has taken hold of me because of the wicked who reject Your law.

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.

¹⁷On that day My anger will burn against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, so that they will be consumed, and many troubles and afflictions will befall them. On that day they will say, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is no longer with us?’

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.

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.

³All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

¹⁸For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers,

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.

²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

¹⁴I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

¹⁴Why are we just sitting here? Gather together, let us flee to the fortified cities and perish there, for the Lord our God has doomed us. He has given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord.

⁵You fed them with the bread of tears and made them drink the full measure of their tears.

¹⁵He has filled me with bitterness; He has intoxicated me with wormwood.

¹⁵Therefore this is what the Lord of Hosts says concerning the prophets: “I will feed them wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink, for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land.”

¹⁵This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from My hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink from it.

²²Put no more trust in man, who has only the breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?

¹²A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.

⁶⁴Then the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

³³But I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities are laid waste.

²When the days of the siege have ended, you are to burn up a third of the hair inside the city; you are also to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind. For I will unleash a sword behind them.

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.

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

¹⁶Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says: “There will be wailing in all the public squares and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets. The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

¹⁷There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass through your midst,” says the Lord.

⁵when men fear the heights and dangers of the road, when the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper loses its spring, and the caper berry shrivels—for then man goes to his eternal home and mourners walk the streets.

²⁵Then Jeremiah lamented over Josiah, and to this day all the male and female singers recite laments over Josiah. They established them as a statute for Israel, and indeed they are written in the Book of Laments.

³⁸When they arrived at the house of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw the commotion and the people weeping and wailing loudly.

²³When Jesus entered the house of the synagogue leader, He saw the flute players and the noisy crowd.

⁸May it be cursed by those who curse the day—those prepared to rouse Leviathan.

¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.

⁴Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

¹⁷You are to speak this word to them: ‘My eyes overflow with tears; day and night they do not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people has been shattered by a crushing blow, a severely grievous wound.

²⁰Now, O women, hear the word of the Lord. Open your ears to the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters to wail, and one another to lament.

¹¹My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

¹⁸The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest.

¹³Behold, he advances like the clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are ruined!

¹⁶The survivors will escape and live in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valley, each for his own iniquity.

¹⁷Every hand will go limp, and every knee will turn to water.

²⁹and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.

⁸Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.

⁹For her wound is incurable; it has reached even Judah; it has approached the gate of my people, as far as Jerusalem itself.

²Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners.

⁴In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’”

²⁷A great number of people followed Him, including women who kept mourning and wailing for Him.

²⁸But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

⁹Stand up, you complacent women; listen to me. Give ear to my word, you overconfident daughters.

¹⁰In a little more than a year you will tremble, O secure ones. For the grape harvest will fail and the fruit harvest will not arrive.

²²Receive instruction from His mouth, and lay up His words in your heart.

¹⁶The Lord also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty—walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles—

¹⁷This is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.

¹⁸Let them come quickly and take up a lament over us, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids may gush with water.

⁴“I will make mere lads their leaders, and children will rule over them.”

¹¹But I am full of the Lord’s wrath; I am tired of holding it back. “Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the young men gathered together. For both husband and wife will be captured, the old and the very old alike.

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,

⁷I will scatter them with a winnowing fork at the gates of the land. I will bereave and destroy My people who have not turned from their ways.

⁵And as I listened, He said to the others, “Follow him through the city and start killing; do not show pity or spare anyone!

⁶Slaughter the old men, the young men and maidens, the women and children; but do not go near anyone who has the mark. Now begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the temple.

¹⁴‘So then, son of man, prophesy and strike your hands together. Let the sword strike two times, even three. It is a sword that slays, a sword of great slaughter closing in on every side!

¹⁵So that their hearts may melt and many may stumble, I have appointed at all their gates a sword for slaughter. Yes, it is ready to flash like lightning; it is drawn for slaughter.

¹⁰And when the relative who is to burn the bodies picks them up to remove them from the house, he will call to one inside, “Is anyone else with you?” “None,” that person will answer. “Silence,” the relative will retort, “for the name of the Lord must not be invoked.”

¹¹For the Lord gives a command: “The great house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble.”

²They will be exposed to the sun and moon, and to all the host of heaven which they have loved, served, followed, consulted, and worshiped. Their bones will not be gathered up or buried, but will become like dung lying on the ground.

³³Those slain by the Lord on that day will be spread from one end of the earth to the other. They will not be mourned, gathered, or buried. They will be like dung lying on the ground.

¹⁷I will bring such distress on mankind that they will walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung.

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.”

¹⁰who perished at Endor and became like dung on the ground.

²⁵Therefore the anger of the Lord burns against His people; His hand is raised against them to strike them down. The mountains quake, and the corpses lie like refuse in the streets. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

²⁸He chose the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are,

²¹Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

¹¹I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all.

²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

¹⁸Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise.

¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness.”

⁶They trust in their wealth and boast in their great riches.

⁷No man can possibly redeem his brother or pay his ransom to God.

¹⁷Rather, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

¹⁴But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

³¹Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

⁸He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

¹⁸Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?

⁸In God we have boasted all day long, and Your name we will praise forever. Selah

²Take notice: I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.

³Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.

²⁵Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

²⁶If a man who is not circumcised keeps the requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?

⁸But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger.

⁹There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek;

¹⁹Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be placed with the uncircumcised!

²⁰They will fall among those slain by the sword. The sword is appointed! Let them drag her away along with all her multitudes.

²“Only you have I known from all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

¹⁰You will die the death of the uncircumcised at the hands of foreigners. For I have spoken, declares the Lord God.”

⁴¹and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and if their uncircumcised hearts will be humbled and they will make amends for their iniquity,

⁴Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and remove the foreskins of your hearts, O men of Judah and people of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it, because of your evil deeds.”

⁷In addition to all your other abominations, you brought in foreigners uncircumcised in both heart and flesh to occupy My sanctuary; you defiled My temple when you offered My food—the fat and the blood; you broke My covenant.

²⁴In that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing upon the earth.

²⁵The Lord of Hosts will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”

²⁸A man is not a Jew because he is one outwardly, nor is circumcision only outward and physical.

²⁹No, a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise does not come from men, but from God.

⁶The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.