4And you shall say to them, “The LORD says: If they fall, will they not rise? If he turns away, will he not return?”5Why has this people, Jerusalem, turned away in perpetual apostasy? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return.6I listened and heard—what they say is not right. No one repents of his evil, saying, “What have I done?” Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse rushing headlong into battle.7Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times, and the turtledove, swift, and thrush keep the time of her coming, but my people do not know the justice of the LORD.8How do you say, "We are wise, and the Torah of the LORD is with us"? Indeed, behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it a lie.9The wise men are ashamed, dismayed, and captured. Look, they have rejected the word of the LORD—what wisdom do they have?10Therefore I will give their wives to others, their fields to heirs, for from small to great everyone is greedy, greedy; from prophet to priest everyone has done falsehood.11They healed the fracture of the daughter of my people superficially, saying, "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace.12Were they ashamed when they committed an abomination? No, even they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they will fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they will stumble, says the LORD.13I will gather them—an utterance of the LORD. There are no grapes on the vine, no figs on the fig tree, and the leaf withers. I give them, and they will pass over them.14Why are we sitting? Come, let us go to the fortified cities and be silenced there, for the LORD our God has silenced us and made us drink poisoned water, because we have sinned against the LORD.15We waited for peace, but there was no good; for a time of healing, and behold, terror came in its time.16From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses, from the sound of the neighing of his mighty ones. The whole land quakes, and they came and devoured the land and its fullness, the city and those who dwell in it.17For see, I am sending among you snakes, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you, says the LORD.18From my pouring out my grief upon me—upon me my heart languishes.19Listen—the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land! “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her king not in her? Why have they angered me with their images, with foreign vanities?”20The harvest has passed, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.21For the breaking of the daughter of my people I have broken, I have mourned, I am appalled; you have held me fast.22Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no healer there? Why has the healing not ascended, daughter of my people?23Who will give my head waters and my eyes a spring of tears, so I will weep day and night for the profaners of my people’s daughter.
9
Chapter 9
1Who will give me a lodging of wayfarers in the wilderness, and I will leave my people and go from them? For all of them are adulterers, a gathering of garments.2And they tread their tongue as their bow with deception, and not to faithfulness they prevailed in the earth. For from moral evil to moral evil they went out, and they come but they do not know, utterance of the LORD.3Man, beware from his evil, and upon every brother do not trust, for every brother will supplant, and every evil slanderer will walk.4And each man will deceive his neighbor in his evil, and they will not speak truth. They have taught their tongue to speak falsehood; they have made it crooked, and they are weary.5"Your Sabbath rest in the midst of deceit, in deceit they refuse to know me," says the LORD.6Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Behold me, I will refine them and test them— for how should I do because of the daughter of my people?7Their tongue is a slaughtered arrow; deceit is in his mouth. He speaks peace to his fellow, but in his inward parts he sets his ambush.8On gods I will not visit in them, says the LORD. If in a nation such as this my soul will not be avenged!9Over the mountains I will lift up weeping and mourning, and over the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, for they are burned desolate, without a man passing through, and they did not hear the voice of livestock—from the bird of the heavens even to beast, they have fled, they have gone.10And I will give Jerusalem to heaps, a dwelling of jackals, and the cities of Judah I will give as a desolation, without inhabitant.11Who is the wise man who understands this, and to whom the word of the mouth of the LORD has come, that he may declare why the land has perished, it being desolate like a wilderness, without passerby.12And the LORD said, "Concerning their abandoning my Torah which I set before their faces, and they did not hear my voice, and they did not walk in it."13And they went after the stubbornness of their heart and after the Baals which he taught them.14Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, God of Israel: Behold me! I am feeding this people with wormwood and making them drink waters of Head.15And I will scatter them among the nations that they did not know—they and their fathers—and I will send the sword after them until I finish them.16In this way says the LORD of hosts: Consider, and call to the mourners, and let them come; and send to the wise women, and let them come.17And let them hasten and let them intone lamentation over us, and let their eyes shed tears and our eyelids drip water.18For a voice of lamentation is heard from Zion: "How we have been plundered, exceedingly in a year! For we have forsaken the land, for they have thrown out our tabernacles."19For women have heard the word of the LORD, and let your ears take the word of his mouth, and let them teach your daughters lamentation; and a woman her neighbor lament.20For death has ascended through our windows; it has entered our palace/temple complexes to cut off the suckling from outside, the young men from the divine chariots.21Thus says the LORD: "She has fallen—a carcass of humanity like dung on the face of the field, and like an omer from after the harvest, with no gatherer."22This is what the LORD says: 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 wealth.23for if in this he boasts, the one who boasts, understanding and knowing me, that I am the LORD doing steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the land— for in these I delight, utterance of the LORD.24Behold, days are coming, says the LORD, and I will visit upon every circumcised person in uncircumcision.25upon Egypt and upon Judah and upon Edom and upon sons of Ammon and upon Moab and upon all cut-off-of-side those dwelling in the wilderness—for all the nations uncircumcised and all the house of Israel uncircumcised of heart.