1Oh that I had in the wilderness a travelers’ lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a company of traitors.
2They bend their tongue, their bow, in falsehood; and it is not by faithfulness that they have grown strong in the land. For they go from evil to evil, and me they do not know—declaration of Yahweh.
3Let each be on guard against his neighbor, and do not trust in any brother; for every brother is a deceiver, and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.
4Each deceives his neighbor, and they do not speak the truth; they have trained their tongue to speak falsehood; they wear themselves out committing iniquity.
5Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me—declaration of Yahweh.
6Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts: Behold, I will refine them and test them, for how else should I act because of the daughter of my people?
7Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow; it speaks deceit. With his mouth one speaks peace to his neighbor, but within himself he lays his ambush.
8Shall I not punish them for these things?—declaration of Yahweh. Shall not my self take vengeance on a nation such as this?
9For the mountains I will take up weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lament, for they are burned up so that no one passes through, and no sound of livestock is heard; from the birds of the heavens to the beasts they have fled, they are gone.
10And I will make Jerusalem heaps of ruins, a lair of jackals, and the cities of Judah I will make a desolation, without inhabitant.
11Who is the wise man that he may understand this, and the one to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why has the land perished, been burned up like the wilderness, so that no one passes through?
12And Yahweh said: It is because they forsook my law that I set before them, and did not obey my voice, nor walk according to it,
13but walked after the stubbornness of their heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.
14Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am about to feed this people wormwood, and give them poisoned water to drink.
15And I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have finished them off.
16Thus says Yahweh of hosts: Consider carefully, and call for the wailing women, that they may come; and send for the skilled women, that they may come,
17and let them hurry and take up a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids gush with water.
18For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are devastated! We are utterly ashamed, for we have left the land, for they have cast down our dwellings.’
19Yes, hear the word of Yahweh, O women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth; teach your daughters a wailing, and each her neighbor a lament.
20For death has come up through our windows, it has entered our palaces, to cut off the child from the street, the young men from the squares.
21Speak—thus is the declaration of Yahweh—the corpses of mankind will fall like dung on the face of the field, and like a sheaf behind the reaper, with no one to gather it.
22Thus says Yahweh: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches;
23but let the one who boasts boast in this: understanding and knowing me, that I am Yahweh who practices loyal love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight—declaration of Yahweh.
24Behold, days are coming—declaration of Yahweh—when I will punish everyone circumcised yet still in his foreskin:
25Egypt and Judah and Edom and the sons of Ammon and Moab and all who clip the edges of their hair, who dwell in the wilderness; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.
Open in the interactive reader →