The Anselm Project

Chapter 18

¹ The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying: ² Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. ³ So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, working at the wheel. ⁴ The vessel that he made of clay was marred in the potter's hand. He returned and made it into another vessel, as seemed right to the potter to do. ⁵ The word of the LORD came to me, saying. ⁶ Cannot I do to you just as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Look, like clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand, house of Israel. ⁷ At the moment I speak concerning a nation and a kingdom, to uproot and demolish and destroy it. ⁸ and that nation turns from its evil, which I spoke against it, then I will relent concerning the evil that I planned to do to it. ⁹ And at that time, if I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant. ¹⁰ and he does evil in my eyes so as not to hear my voice, and I will relent over the good that I said I would do for him. ¹¹ And now please say to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the LORD: Behold, I am forming calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Please return, each man from his evil way, and make good your ways and your deeds. ¹² And they will say, "It is hopeless! For we will follow our own thoughts, and we will do what the stubbornness of our evil heart wants." ¹³ Therefore, the LORD says: "Ask among the nations—who has heard such things? Virgin Israel has done a very horrible thing." ¹⁴ Will one abandon the snow of Lebanon from the Rock of the field? Or will foreign cold flowing waters be plucked up? ¹⁵ For my people have forgotten me; they offer incense in vain, and they stumble in their ways, paths of eternity, to walk tracks of a way not paved. ¹⁶ to make their land a desolation, an object of whistling for an eternal possession; every passerby over it will whistle and shake his head. ¹⁷ Like an east wind I will scatter them before the enemy. I will show them backs and not faces in the day of their calamity. ¹⁸ And they said, "Come and let us devise thoughts against Jeremiah, for the Torah will not perish from the priest, and counsel from the wise, and word from the prophet. Come and let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not give ear to any of his words." ¹⁹ Give ear, LORD, to me and hear the voice of my disputers. ²⁰ Should one repay evil in place of good? For they dug a pit for my soul. Remember—I stood in your presence to speak good concerning them, to return your wrath from them. ²¹ Therefore give their sons to famine, and let them drag them by the hand of the sword. Let their wives be bereaved and widows, and let their men be slain by death; their young men struck by the sword in warfare. ²² May you hear a cry from their houses, for you bring a raiding party against them suddenly, for they have dug a pit to capture me and they have hidden traps for my feet. ²³ And you, LORD, know all their counsel against me to death. Do not atone for their iniquity or their sin from before you. Do not blot them out, and let them be stumbling blocks before you. At the time of your anger, deal with them.

Chapter 19

¹ Thus says the LORD: Go and acquire a jar of the potter—the potter's jar—and elders of the people and elders of the priests. ² And you shall go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom, which is at the entrance of the Potsherd Gate, and you shall call there the words that I will speak to you. ³ And you shall say, "Hear the word of the LORD, kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of Hosts, God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing evil on this place, which whoever hears it, his ears will tingle." ⁴ Because they have abandoned me and have profaned this place and have offered incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of innocents. ⁵ and they built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak or arise in my heart. ⁶ Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the LORD, and it will not be called to this place any longer Tophet and Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but rather Valley of Slaughter. ⁷ And I will frustrate the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will hurl them down by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those seeking their life. And I will give their carcasses as food for the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth. ⁸ I will set this city as a desolation and as a hissing; every passerby over it will be appalled and will hiss over all its blows. ⁹ And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and a man will eat the flesh of his companion in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those seeking their life will besiege them. ¹⁰ You shall break the jar before the eyes of the men who are walking with you. ¹¹ You shall say to them: The LORD of Hosts says: Just so I will shatter this people and this city, as one shatters the potter's vessel, which cannot be made whole again. And in Tophet they will bury because there is no other place to bury. ¹² Thus I will do to this place, says the LORD, and to its inhabitants, to make this city like a shoulder. ¹³ And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will become like the place of Topheth, the unclean ones—for all the houses upon whose roofs they burned incense to all the host of the heavens and poured out libations to other gods. ¹⁴ Then Jeremiah came from Tophet, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the LORD's House and said to all the people: ¹⁵ Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing to this city and upon all its cities all the evil that I spoke concerning it, because they stiffened their neck so as not to hear my words.