Jeremiah 23

1 Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD.
2 Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.
3 I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply.
4 I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the LORD.
5 Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; As king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land.
6 In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security. This is the name they give him: The LORD our justice.
7 Therefore, the days will come, says the LORD, when they shall no longer say, As the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt;
8 but rather, As the LORD lives, who brought the descendants of the house of Israel up from the land of the north--and from all the lands to which I banished them; they shall again live on their own land.
9 Concerning the prophets: My heart within me is broken, my bones all tremble; I am like a man who is drunk, overcome by wine, Because of the LORD, because of his holy words.
10 With adulterers the land is filled; on their account the land mourns, the pasture ranges are seared. Theirs is an evil course, theirs is unjust power.
11 Both prophet and priest are godless! In my very house I find their wickedness, says the LORD.
12 Hence their way shall become for them slippery ground. In the darkness they shall lose their footing, and fall headlong; Evil I will bring upon them: the year of their punishment, says the LORD.
13 Among Samaria's prophets I saw unseemly deeds: They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
14 But among Jerusalem's prophets I saw deeds still more shocking: Adultery, living in lies, siding with the wicked, so that no one turns from evil; To me they are all like Sodom, its citizens like Gomorrah.
15 Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts against the prophets: Behold, I will give them wormwood to eat, and poison to drink; For from Jerusalem's prophets ungodliness has gone forth into the whole land.
16 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Listen not to the words of your prophets, who fill you with emptiness; Visions of their own fancy they speak, not from the mouth of the LORD.
17 They say to those who despise the word of the LORD, Peace shall be yours; And to everyone who walks in hardness of heart, No evil shall overtake you.
18 Now, who has stood in the council of the LORD, to see him and to hear his word? Who has heeded his word, so as to announce it?
19 See, the storm of the LORD! His wrath breaks forth In a whirling storm that bursts upon the heads of the wicked.
20 The anger of the LORD shall not abate until he has done and fulfilled what he has determined in his heart. When the time comes, you shall fully understand.
21 I did not send these prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
22 Had they stood in my council, and did they but proclaim to my people my words, They would have brought them back from evil ways and from their wicked deeds.
23 Am I a God near at hand only, says the LORD, and not a God far off?
24 Can a man hide in secret without my seeing him? says the LORD. Do I not fill both heaven and earth? says the LORD.
25 I have heard the prophets who prophesy lies in my name say, I had a dream! I had a dream!
26 How long will this continue? Is my name in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy lies and their own deceitful fancies?
27 By their dreams which they recount to each other, they think to make my people forget my name, just as their fathers forgot my name for Baal.
28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount his dream; let him who has my word speak my word truthfully! What has straw to do with the wheat? says the LORD.
29 Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, like a hammer shattering rocks?
30 Therefore I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who steal my words from each other.
31 Yes, I am against the prophets, says the LORD, who borrow speeches to pronounce oracles.
32 Yes, I am against the prophets who prophesy lying dreams, says the LORD, and who lead my people astray by recounting their lies and by their empty boasting. From me they have no mission or command, and they do this people no good at all, says the LORD.
33 And when this people, or a prophet or a priest asks you, What is the burden of the LORD? you shall answer, You are the burden, and I cast you off, says the LORD.
34 If a prophet or a priest or anyone else mentions the burden of the LORD, I will punish that man and his house.
35 Thus you shall ask, when speaking to one another, What answer did the LORD give? or, What did the LORD say?
36 But the burden of the LORD you shall mention no more. For each man his own word becomes the burden so that you pervert the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.
37 Thus shall you ask the prophet, What answer did the LORD give? or, What did the LORD say?
38 But if you ask about the burden of the LORD, then thus says the LORD: Because you use this phrase, the burden of the LORD, though I forbade you to use it,
39 therefore I will lift you on high and cast you from my presence, you and the city which I gave to you and your fathers.
40 And I will bring upon you eternal reproach, eternal, unforgettable shame.

Jeremiah 24

1 The LORD showed me two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the LORD.--This was after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had exiled from Jerusalem Jeconiah, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, the artisans and the skilled workers, and brought them to Babylon.--
2 One basket contained excellent figs, the early-ripening kind. But the other basket contained very bad figs, so bad they could not be eaten.
3 Then the LORD said to me: What do you see, Jeremiah? Figs, I replied; the good ones are very good, but the bad ones very bad, so bad they cannot be eaten.
4 Thereupon this word of the LORD came to me:
5 Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, even so will I regard with favor Judah's exiles whom I sent away from this place into the land of the Chaldeans.
6 I will look after them for their good, and bring them back to this land, to build them up, not to tear them down; to plant them, not to pluck them out.
7 I will give them a heart with which to understand that I am the LORD. They shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
8 And like the figs that are bad, so bad they cannot be eaten--yes, thus says the LORD--even so will I treat Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes, the remnant of Jerusalem remaining in this land and those who have settled in the land of Egypt.
9 I will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a taunt and a curse, in all the places to which I will drive them.
10 I will send upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, until they have disappeared from the land which I gave them and their fathers.

Jeremiah 25

1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah (the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon).
2 This word the prophet Jeremiah spoke to all the people of Judah and all the citizens of Jerusalem:
3 Since the thirteenth year of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day-these three and twenty years-the word of the LORD has come to me and I spoke to you untiringly, but you would not listen.
4 Though you refused to listen or pay heed, the LORD has sent you without fail all his servants the prophets
5 with this message: Turn back, each of you, from your evil way and from your evil deeds; then you shall remain in the land which the LORD gave you and your fathers, from of old and forever.
6 Do not follow strange gods to serve and adore them, lest you provoke me with your handiwork, and I bring evil upon you.
7 But you would not listen to me, says the LORD, and so you provoked me with your handiwork to your own harm.
8 Hence, thus says the LORD of hosts: Since you would not listen to my words,
9 lo! I will send for and fetch all the tribes of the north, says the LORD (and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant); I will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against all these neighboring nations. I will doom them, making them an object of horror, of ridicule, of everlasting reproach.
10 Among them I will bring to an end the song of joy and the song of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstone and the light of the lamp.
11 This whole land shall be a ruin and a desert. Seventy years these nations shall be enslaved to the king of Babylon;
12 but when the seventy years have elapsed, I will punish the king of Babylon and the nation and the land of the Chaldeans for their guilt, says the LORD. Their land I will turn into everlasting desert.
13 Against that land I will fulfill all the words I have spoken against it (all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations).
14 They also shall be enslaved to great nations and mighty kings, and thus I will repay them according to their own deeds and according to their own handiwork.
15 For thus said the LORD, the God of Israel, to me: Take this cup of foaming wine from my hand, and have all the nations to whom I will send you drink it.
16 They shall drink, and be convulsed, and go mad, because of the sword I will send among them.
17 I took the cup from the hand of the LORD and gave drink to all the nations to which the LORD sent me:
18 (Jerusalem, the cities of Judah, her kings and her princes, to make them a ruin and a desert, an object of ridicule and cursing, as they are today;)
19 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and his servants, his princes, all the people under him, native
20 and foreign; all the kings of the land of Uz; all the kings of the land of the Philistines: Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod;
21 Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites;
22 all the kings of Tyre, of Sidon, and of the shores beyond the sea;
23 Dedan and Tema and Buz, all the desert dwellers who shave their temples;
24 (all the kings of Arabia;)
25 all the kings of Zimri, of Elam, of the Medes;
26 all the kings of the north, near and far, one after the other; all the kingdoms upon the face of the earth (and after them the king of Sheshach shall drink).
27 Tell them: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink! become drunk and vomit; fall, never to rise, before the sword that I will send among you!
28 If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink, say to them: Thus says the LORD of hosts: You must drink!
29 For since with this city, which is called by my name, I begin to inflict evil, how can you possibly be spared? You shall not be spared! I will call down the sword upon all who inhabit the earth, says the LORD of hosts.
30 Prophesy against them all these things and say to them: The LORD roars from on high, from his holy dwelling he raises his voice; Mightily he roars over the range, a shout like that of vintagers over the grapes.
31 To all who inhabit the earth to its very ends the uproar spreads; For the LORD has an indictment against the nations, he is to pass judgment upon all mankind: The godless shall be given to the sword, says the LORD.
32 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Lo! calamity stalks from nation to nation; A great storm is unleashed from the ends of the earth.
33 On that day, those whom the LORD has slain will be strewn from one end of the earth to the other. None will mourn them, none will gather them for burial; they shall lie like dung on the field.
34 Howl, you shepherds, and wail! roll in the dust, leaders of the flock! The time for your slaughter has come; like choice rams you shall fall.
35 There is no flight for the shepherds, no escape for the leaders of the flock.
36 Listen! Wailing from the shepherds, howling by the leaders of the flock! For the LORD lays waste their grazing place,
37 desolate lie the peaceful pastures;
38 The lion leaves his lair, and their land is made desolate By the sweeping sword, by the burning wrath of the LORD.