Jeremiah 16

1 This message came to me from the LORD:
2 Do not marry any woman; you shall not have sons or daughters in this place,
3 for thus says the LORD concerning the sons and daughters who will be born in this place, the mothers who will give them birth, the fathers who will beget them in this land:
4 Of deadly disease they shall die. Unlamented and unburied they will lie like dung on the ground. Sword and famine will make an end of them, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.
5 Go not into a house of mourning, the LORD continued: go not there to lament or offer sympathy. For I have withdrawn my friendship from this people, says the LORD, my kindness and my pity.
6 They shall die, the great and the lowly, in this land, and shall go unburied and unlamented. No one will gash himself or shave his head for them.
7 They will not break bread with the bereaved to console them in their bereavement; they will not give them the cup of consolation to drink over the death of father or mother.
8 Enter not a house where people are celebrating, to sit with them eating and drinking.
9 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Before your very eyes and during your lifetime I will silence from this place the cry of joy and the cry of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
10 When you proclaim all these words to this people and they ask you: Why has the LORD pronounced all these great evils against us? What is our crime? What sin have we committed against the LORD, our God?--
11 you shall answer them: It is because your fathers have forsaken me, says the LORD, and followed strange gods, which they served and worshiped; but me they have forsaken, and my law they have not observed.
12 And you have done worse than your fathers. Here you are, every one of you, walking in the hardness of his evil heart instead of listening to me.
13 I will cast you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known; there you can serve strange gods day and night, because I will not grant you my mercy.
14 However, days will surely come, says the LORD, when it will no longer be said, As the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites out of Egypt;
15 but rather, As the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites out of the land of the north and out of all the countries to which he had banished them. I will bring them back to the land which I gave their fathers.
16 Look! I will send many fishermen, says the LORD, to catch them. After that, I will send many hunters to hunt them out from every mountain and hill and from the clefts of the rocks.
17 For my eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor does their guilt escape my view.
18 I will at once repay them double for their crime and their sin of profaning my land with their detestable corpses of idols, and filling my heritage with their abominations.
19 O LORD, my strength, my fortress, my refuge in the day of distress! To you will the nations come from the ends of the earth, and say, Mere frauds are the heritage of our fathers, empty idols of no use.
20 Can man make for himself gods? These are not gods.
21 Look, then: I will give them knowledge; this time I will leave them in no doubt Of my strength and my power: they shall know that my name is LORD.

Jeremiah 17

1 The sin of Judah is written with an iron stylus, Engraved with a diamond point upon the tablets of their hearts.(And the horns of their altars,
2 when their sons remember their altars and their sacred poles, beside the green trees, on the high hills,
3 the peaks in the highland.) Your wealth and all your treasures I will give as spoil. In recompense for all your sins throughout your borders,
4 You will relinquish your hold on your heritage which I have given you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land that you know not: For a fire has been kindled by my wrath that will burn forever.
5 Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, But stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth.
7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.
8 He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: It fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green; In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.
9 More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?
10 I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart, To reward everyone according to his ways, according to the merit of his deeds.
11 A partridge that mothers a brood not her own is the man who acquires wealth unjustly: In midlife it will desert him; in the end he is only a fool.
12 A throne of glory, exalted from the beginning, such is our holy place.
13 O hope of Israel, O LORD! all who forsake you shall be in disgrace; The rebels in the land shall be put to shame; they have forsaken the source of living waters (the LORD).
14 Heal me, LORD, that I may be healed; save me, that I may be saved, for it is you whom I praise.
15 See how they say to me, Where is the word of the LORD? Let it come to pass!
16 Yet I did not press you to send calamity; the day without remedy I have not desired. You know what passed my lips; it is present before you.
17 Do not be my ruin, you, my refuge in the day of misfortune.
18 Let my persecutors, not me, be confounded; let them, not me, be broken. Bring upon them the day of misfortune, crush them with repeated destruction.
19 Thus said the LORD to me: Go, stand at the Gate of Benjamin, where the kings of Judah enter and leave, and at the other gates of Jerusalem.
20 There say to them: Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all you citizens of Jerusalem who enter these gates!
21 Thus says the LORD: As you love your lives, take care not to carry burdens on the sabbath day, to bring them in through the gates of Jerusalem.
22 Bring no burden from your homes on the sabbath. Do no work whatever, but keep holy the sabbath, as I commanded your fathers,
23 though they did not listen or give ear, but stiffened their necks so as not to hear or take correction.
24 If you obey me wholeheartedly, says the LORD, and carry no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath, keeping the sabbath holy and abstaining from all work on it,
25 then, through the gates of this city, kings who sit upon the throne of David will continue to enter, riding in their chariots or upon their horses, along with their princes, and the men of Judah, and the citizens of Jerusalem. This city will remain inhabited forever.
26 To it people will come from the cities of Judah and the neighborhood of Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and from the foothills, from the hill country and the Negeb, to bring holocausts and sacrifices, cereal offerings and incense and thank offerings to the house of the LORD.
27 But if you do not obey me and keep holy the sabbath, if you carry burdens and come through the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath, I will set unquenchable fire to its gates, which will consume the palaces of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 18

1 This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
2 Rise up, be off to the potter's house; there I will give you my message.
3 I went down to the potter's house and there he was, working at the wheel.
4 Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me:
6 Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done? says the LORD. Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.
7 Sometimes I threaten to uproot and tear down and destroy a nation or a kingdom.
8 But if that nation which I have threatened turns from its evil, I also repent of the evil which I threatened to do.
9 Sometimes, again, I promise to build up and plant a nation or a kingdom.
10 But if that nation does what is evil in my eyes, refusing to obey my voice, I repent of the good with which I promised to bless it.
11 And now, tell this to the men of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Take care! I am fashioning evil against you and making a plan. Return, each of you, from his evil way; reform your ways and your deeds.
12 But they will say, No use! We will follow our own devices; each one of us will behave according to the stubbornness of his evil heart!
13 Therefore thus says the LORD: Ask among the nations- who has ever heard the like? Truly horrible things has virgin Israel done!
14 Does the snow of Lebanon desert the rocky heights? Do the gushing waters dry up that flow fresh down the mountains?
15 Yet my people have forgotten me: they burn incense to a thing that does not exist. They stumble out of their ways, the paths of old, To travel on bypaths, not the beaten track.
16 Their land shall be turned into a desert, an object of lasting ridicule: All passers-by will be amazed, will shake their heads.
17 Like the east wind, I will scatter them before their enemies; I will show them my back, not my face, in their day of disaster.
18 Come, they said, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah. It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests, nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets. And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word.
19 Heed me, O LORD, and listen to what my adversaries say.
20 Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life? Remember that I stood before you to speak in their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them.
21 So now, deliver their children to famine, do away with them by the sword. Let their wives be made childless and widows; let their men die of pestilence, their young men be slain by the sword in battle.
22 May cries be heard from their homes, when suddenly you send plunderers against them. For they have dug a pit to capture me, they have hid snares for my feet;
23 But you, O LORD, know all their plans to slay me. Forgive not their crime, blot not out their sin in your sight! Let them go down before you, proceed against them in the time of your anger.