In the middle of his life it will leave him,
And in the end he will be proved a fool.
12O Throne of Glory exalted from of old,
Our Sacred Shrine!
13O Hope of Israel! O LORD!
All who forsake You shall be put to shame,
Those in the land who turn from Youe
Shall be doomedf men,
For they have forsaken the LORD,
The Fount of living waters.
14Heal me, O LORD, and let me be healed;
Save me, and let me be saved;
For You are my glory.
15See, they say to me:
“Where is the prediction of the LORD?
Let it come to pass!”
16But I have not g-evaded
Being a shepherd in your service,-g
Nor have I longed for the fatal day.
You know the utterances of my lips,
They were ever before You.
17Do not be a cause of dismay to me;
You are my refuge in a day of calamity.
18Let my persecutors be shamed,
And let not me be shamed;
Let them be dismayed,
And let not me be dismayed.
Bring on them the day of disaster,
And shatter them with double destruction.
19Thus said the LORD to me: Go and stand in the People’s Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go forth, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, 20and say to them: Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who enter by these gates!
21Thus said the LORD: Guard yourselves for your own sake against carrying burdensh on the sabbath day, and bringing them through the gates of Jerusalem. 22Nor shall you carry out burdens from your houses on the sabbath day, or do any work, but you shall hallow the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. (23But they would not listen or turn their ear; they stiffened their necks and would not pay heed or accept discipline.) 24If you obey Me—declares the LORD—and do not bring in burdens through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day and do no work on it, 25then through the gates of this city shall enter kings who sit upon the throne of David, with their officers— riding on chariots and horses, they and their officers—and the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city shall be inhabited for all time. 26And people shall come from the towns of Judah and from the environs of Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the Shephelah, and from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, meal offerings and frankincense, and bringing offerings of thanksgiving to the House of the LORD. 27But if you do not obey My command to hallow the sabbath day and to carry in no burdens through the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, then I will set fire to its gates; it shall consume the fortresses of Jerusalem and it shall not be extinguished.
18The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2“Go down to the house of a potter, and there I will impart My words to you.” 3So I went down to the house of a potter, and found him working at the wheel. 4a-And if the vessel he was making was spoiled, as happens to clay in the potter’s hands,-a he would make it into another vessel, such as the potter saw fit to make.
5Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6O House of Israel, can I not deal with you like this potter?—says the LORD. Just like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in My hands, O House of Israel! 7At one moment I may decree that a nation or a kingdom shall be uprooted and pulled down and destroyed; 8but if that nation against which I made the decree turns back from its wickedness, I change My mind concerning the punishment I planned to bring on it. 9At another moment I may decree that a nation or a kingdom shall be built and planted; 10but if it does what is displeasing to Me and does not obey Me, then I change My mind concerning the good I planned to bestow upon it.
11And now, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus said the LORD: I am devisingb disaster for you and laying plans against you. Turn back, each of you, from your wicked ways, and mend your ways and your actions! 12But they will say, “It is no use. We will keep on following our own plans; each of us will act in the willfulness of his evil heart.”
13Assuredly, thus said the LORD:
Inquire among the nations:
Who has heard anything like this?
Maiden Israel has done
A most horrible thing.
14cDoes one forsake Lebanon snow
From the mountainous rocks?
Does one abandon cool water
Flowing from afar?
15Yet My people have forgotten Me:
They sacrifice to a delusion:
They are made to stumble in their ways—
The ancient paths—
And to walk instead on byways,
On a road not built up.
16So their land will become a desolation,
An object of hissingd for all time.
Every passerby will be appalled
And will shake his head.d
17Like the east wind, I will scatter them
Before the enemy.
e-I will look upon their back, not their face,-e
In their day of disaster.
18They said,f “Come let us devise a plot against Jeremiah—for instruction shall not fail from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor oracle from the prophet. Come, let us strike him with the tongue, and we shall no longer have to listen to all those words of his.”
19Listen to me, O LORD—
And take note of g-what my enemies say!-g
20Should good be repaid with evil?
Yet they have dug a pit for me.
Remember how I stood before You
To plead in their behalf,
To turn Your anger away from them!
21Oh, give their children over to famine,
Mow them down by the sword.
Let their wives be bereaved
Of children and husbands,
Let their men be struck down by the plague,
And their young men be slain in battle by the sword.
22Let an outcry be heard from their houses
When You bring sudden marauders against them;
For they have dug a pit to trap me,
And laid snares for my feet.
23O LORD, You know
All their plots to kill me.
Do not pardon their iniquity,
Do not blot out their guilt from Your presence.
Let them be made to stumble before You—
Act against them in Your hour of wrath!
19 Thus said the LORD: Go buy a jug of potter’s ware. And [take] some of the elders of the people and the priests, 2and go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom—a-at the entrance of the Harsith Gate-a—and proclaim there the words which I will speak to you.
3Say: “Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring such disaster upon this place that the ears of all who hear about it will tingle. 4For they and their fathers and the kings of Judah have forsaken Me, and have made this place alien [to Me]; they have sacrificed in it to other gods whom they have not experienced,b and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. 5They have built shrines to Baal, to put their children to the fire as burnt offerings to Baal—which I never commanded, never decreed, and which never came to My mind. 6Assuredly, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when this place shall no longer be called Topheth or Valley of Ben-hinnom, but Valley of Slaughter.
7“And I will frustratec the plans of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hand of those who seek their lives; and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. 8And I will make this city an object of horror and hissing;d everyone who passes by it will be appalled and will hiss over all its wounds. 9And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall devour one another’s flesh—because of the desperate straits to which they will be reduced by their enemies, who seek their life.”
10Then you shall smash the jug in the sight of the men who go with you, 11and say to them: “Thus said the LORD of Hosts: So will I smash this people and this city, as one smashes a potter’s vessel, which can never be mended. And they shall bury in Topheth until no room is left for burying. 12That is what I will do to this place and its inhabitants—declares the LORD. I will make this city like Topheth: 13the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be unclean, like that place Topheth—all the houses on the roofs of which offerings were made to the whole host of heaven and libations were poured out to other gods.”
14When Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, he stood in the court of the House of the LORD and said to all the people: 15“Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring upon this city and upon all its villages all the disaster which I have decreed against it, for they have stiffened their necks and refused to heed My words.”
20 Pashhur son of Immer, the priest who was chief officer of the House of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesy these things. 2Pashhur thereupon had Jeremiah flogged and put in the cella at the Upper Benjamin Gate in the House of the LORD. 3The next day, Pashhur
