IEREMIAS
TO THE READER

EDITION OF THE GREEK TEXT

The New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) version of Ieremias is based on the critical edition of Joseph Ziegler (Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum Auctoritate Societatis Litterarum Gottingensis editum XV: Ieremias Baruch Threni Epistula Ieremiae [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957]), though in a number of instances, notably in chapter 43, we have deviated from Ziegler’s edition. The deviation in 52.24 (“way” > “threshold”) NETS owes to J. Smith.¹ No systematic and thorough text-critical reassessment has, however, been carried out.

TRANSLATION PROFILE OF THE GREEK

General Character

Given that, according to opinio communis, Greek Jeremiah (hereafter Ieremias) is based on a Hebrew text substantially at variance with MT, a comparison of the Greek with its source text is no straightforward task. It is nevertheless reasonably clear that the most basic norm of the translator (hereafter Ier²) was that of isomorphism. That is to say, typically each morpheme of the source text is represented in the target text. This is true not only of so-called content words (lexemes) but as well of structure words. For example, Hebrew articles, notae accusativi, infinitival prefix , personal pronouns (even when rendered superfluous by Greek inflection), pronominal suffixes, pleonastic pronouns and adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are all regularly represented, whether or not such representation results in standard Greek usage. Though certain structural items are at times added in deference to Greek usage, this occurs almost exclusively at the level of phrase and clause and rarely at the level of discourse. Moreover, deference to Greek literary style was often trumped by Ier’s isomorphism, as a result of which Greek articles are notably in short supply.

Be it noted, however, that isomorphism need not mean lexical or grammatical consistency. Thus Hebrew prepositions may at times trigger Greek articles, in the same sort of way that a Hebrew lexeme may be assigned a number of Greek counterparts, differentiated according to contextual demand, whether linguistic or expositional, even though the context may be rather narrowly conceived.

In spite of its isomorphism, Ieremias is usually intelligible though rarely elegant. Yet the reader encounters many instances of unintelligibility. As good an example as any is perhaps 52.19, the more since it contains transcriptions (see further below): . Though this line is an exact representation of the Hebrew source text—which was evidently very much like MT—what was a Greek reader without access to the Hebrew to make of it? NETS has glossed it as: “And the chief cook took away the saphphoth and the masmaroth and the pitchers and the lampstands and the censers and the ladles, which were gold gold and which were silver silver,” with a few notes attached to help the reader of English. Problems encountered by Ier in the source text are typically passed on to the reader. Difficulties, too, may be caused by uncertain referents/antecedents of pronominals (e.g., 27.44; 29.14, 20; 42.2). Especially the Oracles Against the Nations (OAN) present many uncertainties of various kinds. All the same, Ier is not totally oblivious to Greek literary conventions. So for example in 4.23–26 he renders the fourfold (“I looked at”) of his source into two pairs of . All in all, though, Ieremias often lacks semantic transparency, because too little attention was paid to units of discourse beyond the clausal level.

Stipp rightly notes that “diese Übersetzung auf sprachliche Glätte wenig Rücksicht nahm und in ästhetischer Hinsicht ihren Lesern nicht entgegenkam.”³

Of Consistency and Inconsistency

Though Ier’s most basic norm is that of isomorphism, as noted, this does not need to mean a heavy emphasis on lexical/grammatical consistency. As a result, predictable Hebrew-Greek equivalency and isomorphism may be quite distinct. While lack of consistency can suggest different agents—whether translators or revisers—it is equally true that one and the same agent may make use of such inconsistency to slip into his text interpretive elements, whether of purely local import or possibly with a larger scope. We are here interested in such marked usage, especially those instances that are not readily explained as obligatory differentiation in the target language. Here we note some interesting examples. Though the textual facts are clear, the reasons for them are not always so. In each case, the item in question is distributed throughout the book.

Variation at the Word Level

1a (“corpse”) 7.33; 9.22; 19.7; 40.5

1b (“carcass”) 16.18; 41.20; 43.30

In all but 40.5 the Hebrew term is , used for a dead body of human and animal alike. Though in this case one can scarcely speak of a default Hebrew-Greek equivalency, the difference in rendering nevertheless invites examination. Since Greek, like English, differentiates, one might expect that 1a denotes deceased humans and 1b dead animals. When one finds that, in fact, both terms are used to describe human dead, shows itself to be a marked usage and based on contextual considerations. So it seems safe to say that Ier did not think well of King Ioakim, alive or dead (43.30). As might be expected, in Leuitikon (Leviticus) is standard, with the sole exception of 21.5 where reference is made to a human.

2a (“strange/foreign gods”) 1.16; 5.19; 7.6, 9, 18; 11.10; 13.10; 16.11; 19.4, 13; 22.9; 25.6. In all instances, with the exception of 5.19 , is a rendition of .

2b (“other gods”) 16.13; 39.29; 42.15; 51.3, 5, 8, 15. All cases gloss .

The default in this case is reasonably clear. Reasonably clear too would seem to be Ier’s reason for differentiation. Though Israel’s pursuit of “foreign ways” is already noted in the Hebrew source text, signaled notably by (2.25; 3.13; 5.19; 18.14; 37[30].8) and (2.21; 5.19; 8.19; 19.4)—all nine glossed by —Ier makes it more explicit by differentiating between the worship of “strange/foreign gods” in the homeland (e.g., 5.19) and the worship of “other (non-Yahweh) gods” once the people have been forced to leave their homeland. The same difference in perspective can be seen in Deuteronomy between chapters 4–30 , on the one hand, and 31–32 , on the other, though Deut 31.16 and 32.12 have explicit warrant for differentiation in the Hebrew.

3a (“prophet”) 1.5; 2.8, 26, 30; 4.9; 5.13, 31; 7.25; 8.1; 13.13; 14.13, 14, 15(bis), 18; 18.18; 23.6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34; 25.4; 28.59; 33.5; 34.12, 13, 15; 35.8, 9(bis); 36.15; 39.32; 42.15; 44.19; 49.2; 50.6; 51.4, 31.

3b (“pseudo-prophet”) 6.13; 33.7, 8, 11, 16; 34.7; 35.1; 36.1, 8. In both cases, all the glosses are for .

Ier’s standard gloss is patently obvious and both items are distributed throughout the book, although not evenly so. Be it noted, however, that when “pseudo-prophet” appears on the scene “prophet” by no means disappears. Since a prophet does not become a pseudo-prophet (a word which arguably originated with Ier) by prophesying by Baal (2.8) nor by prophesying what is wrong (5.31) or lies in the Lord’s name (23.25) nor by not having been sent by the Lord (14.15) nor by being defiled (23.11) or causing defilement (23.15) nor by rendering a vision empty (23.16) or projecting his own thoughts (23.26), it is not immediately clear how a prophet could become a pseudo-prophet. Yet, it is in fact quite possible that Ier is basing his differentiation on Ier 35.9 (= Deut 18.22). That is to say, a prophet is shown to be a pseudo-prophet when what he predicts does not happen. Since after the panoramic overview of 1–32, chapter 33.1 starts the tale of the book anew on a more horizontal plane (see further below), it makes sense that pseudo-prophets should not be shown to exist until chapter 33. Though the term already appears proleptically in 6.13, it does not become applicable until the predicted events are beginning to unfold.

4a (“magistrate/ruler”) 1.18; 2.26; 4.9; 8.1; 17.25 (bis); 24.1; 30.3; 31.7; 32.4; 33.10, 11, 12, 16, 21; 39.32; 41.19, 21; 42.4; 43.12, 14, 21; 44.14, 15; 45.22, 25, 27; 51.17, 21; 52.10. All translate . further has no translation equivalent in 51.9.

4b (“leader”) 45.17; 46.3(bis); 47.7, 13; 48.11, 13, 16; 49.1, 8; 50.4, 5. All translate . further translates in 28.23, 57 (cf. v. 28).

4c (“one with power”) 41.19. Though this term translates , it functions as a replacement for . Evidently, Ier did not know what to do with the sequence of Judah and of Jerusalem.

4d (“noble”) 24.8; 25.18; 27.35; 32.5; 41.10. All translate further translates in 14.3.

Though 4a is Ier’s default, 4a, 4b and 4d have wide distribution in the book. Since for Ier the are clearly local magistrates, such terminology is evidently deemed inappropriate when the source text speaks of military personnel. That the latter should appear predominantly in later chapters of the book is simply a matter of contents. Both and are apparently deemed inappropriate when the social elites come into view. Ier clearly does not adhere to a lexical correspondence but differentiates based on context.

5a (“command”) 1.7, 17; 7.22, 23(bis), 31; 11.4(bis); 13.5, 6; 14.14; 17.22; 19.5; 23.32; 27.21; 28.59; 29.7; 39.23; 42.6, 10, 14, 18; 43.5, 8, 26; 45.10, 27.

5b (“instruct”) 33.2, 8; 34.3; 36.23; 39.13, 35; 41.22; 44.21. In both cases all the glosses are for pi.

Again Ier’s default rendering of the source item is not in doubt nor, for that matter, that this rendering occurs throughout the book, as a result of which the marked item stands in bold relief. It is of interest that, although is the Septuagintal favorite, most other books show a comparable mix of the two terms. A quick count of the Pentateuch reveals the following statistics: Gen 18x, Ex 18x, Leu 16x, Num 18x, Deut 82x; Gen 2x, Ex 3x, Leu 12x, Num 27x, Deut 2x. That synonymy determined translational usage to a degree is likely, but it can hardly be the whole story. If connotes “to give definite orders, implying authority or official function” (emphasis added), as Louw and Nida⁴ note (33.329), not only does the deuteronomic imbalance become understandable, given the nature of the book, but also the occasional use of in Ieremias. A case in point is 39.13 in distinction from 43.5, 8. While in the former the prophet gives Barouch instructions about the safekeeping of a business document, the issue in the latter is that, since Ieremias is in custody, Barouch is commissioned to read Ieremias’ book of oracles in the temple.

What is at issue in the all-too-few examples offered above is not, in the first instance, a “correct” matching of source text and target text but a differentiation in the target language due to context. Hence the variations are not formal but semantic.

Variation at the Phrase/Clause Level

When one moves from the word level to the phrase/clause level, inconsistency for the same Hebrew continues, though again against a general background of consistency. A few examples will have to suffice.

6a 21.10 (cf. 24.6

6b 49.15

6c 49.17 (cf. 47.4

6d 51.11.

In the four chief instances the gloss is for (“set the face”), with the two added ones for (“set the eye”). That 21.10 and 24.6 should use the same Greek verb might be expected in view of close similarity in context, but that 49.15 and 49.17 should differ is more difficult to explain, since reference is being made to the same act by the same group of people. Similarly unclear is the reason for in 51.11. The point to be made, however, is that the translator’s choice though governed by isomorphism, is evidently not necessarily governed by lexical consistency with the source text.

A second example occurs in chapter 41. The Hebrew idiom, (“make a covenant”), occurs four times within this chapter, namely in vv. 8, 13, 15, 18, but in three different forms.

7a 41.8, 15

7b 41.13

7c 41.18

Given the fact that the standard Septuagintal equivalent for is diaqh/khn (at times with the simplex verb) and that both Ier 39.40 and 41.13 feature this idiom, the two deviant forms come as a surprise, the more since they appear nowhere else in the Septuagint. The issue for Ier in all three verses is evidently the same, namely, that the in question is not the covenant made with Israel by divine initiative. In 41.8, 15 it is an agreement for release between Sedekias and the people. Verse 18 in both MT (34.18) and LXX contains a possible reference to the golden calf episode (Ex 32), but in the latter the of Sedekias and his ilk is thrashed along with the calf—even though it is rather woodenly expressed.

Earlier in Ieremias a similar level of variation obtains both in the Hebrew > Greek direction and vice versa.

8a + O(bject) + OC (object complement) 2.15; 3.19

8b + O(bject) + OC (object complement) 13.16 (pass. transformation); 22.6; 27.3

8c + O(bject) + OC (object complement) 38.31

In all six cases the Hebrew verb is (“put/set”)

9a 2.20

9b 3.6; 3.13; 17.8

9c 11.16

What is of interest here is not only that all three translate Hebrew and that all have reference to “trees,” but that in 2.20; 3.6, 13 these trees are sites of whoredom, as a result of which one might have expected to have been used in all three. On the other hand, in 11.16 and 17.8 a flourishing tree is a metaphor for Iouda (Judah) and for a person who trusts in the Lord respectively. Thus one might expect the same descriptive to have been used. Again, the central point to be made is that Ier was not stuck on strict lexical correspondence even when the contexts are similar or identical.

We close the discussion in this section with a rather lengthy doublet, namely, Ier 10.12–17 and 28(51).15–19. While the two passages are identical in MT (apart from the added “Israel” in 10.16), the Greek shows some rather remarkable differences:

The point here is that even when one makes due allowance for textual difference between MT and the source text of Ier, one is still left with a considerable number of both stylistic and interpretational differ-ences—and that in what is a patent doublet on the Hebrew side.

Transcriptions

Transcriptions of Hebrew—as well as some translations that might better have been transferred as transcriptions—are found in considerable number throughout Ieremias. In some cases Ier may have had a source text different from MT, while at other times his source text may have been unintelligible to him. Be that as it may, our interest here, again, is in translational norms. As noted above, a basic norm for Ier was that of isomorphism, i.e., that each morpheme of the source text be represented in the target text. The transcriptions give plenty of evidence of that. Accordingly, items are transcribed even though they make little or no sense in the target text: (8.7), (8.7), (17.26; 48[41].5), (31[48].33; 32.16[25.30], (38[31].21), (38[31].21), (38[31].40), (52.19), (52.19); similarly, transcriptions are supplied with articles when the source text has an article and/or nota accusativi, gender and number being gleaned from the source: (19.2), (44[37].16), (52.19), (52.19).

Also noted above—against the backdrop of lexical and grammatical consistency—was that Ier often deviates from defaults for, at times, clearly contextual reasons. That too is reflected in the transcriptions. Although one finds for (“O lord”) in 22.18, in 41(34).5 we have . Likewise, for (“grain offering”) occurs in 17.26 and 48(41).5 while and (MT appear respectively in 14.12 and 28(51)59—both well attested glosses in the LXX. For (“brook”) we have in 38(31).40, in 29(47).2 and in 38(31).9, and for (“Bozrah”) 31(48).24 has , but 29.23(49.22) has . Thirdly, there is evidence here of Ier’s penchant for working at the lower levels of constituent structure at the expense of the larger units of discourse. One such case is in 42(35).2. Though the Hebrew is a plural gentilic, the Greek transcription is a (singular) name. In the following clause Ier fails to represent the plural suffixes by singular pronouns, thereby creating a puzzling text. A reverse example is 29.14(49.13) where represents (“Bozrah”). Though it may be that, as BHS suggests, the source text differed from MT, the point at issue remains: What can “in her midst” mean in the context? Of a similar kind is Ier’s misreading of (“Hazor”) throughout the Oracle Against Kedar (30.6[49.28], 8[30], 11[33]) as . Yet another, very awkward one, is (“Minni”) in a series of names. For additional transcriptions see Σορ (21.13), (23.6), (26[46].17), (29[47].5), (27[50].44; 29.20[49.19]), (30.6[49.28]), and (31[48].1, 39), (31[48].4, cf. v. 34), (31(48)41), (38[31].8), (45[38].14), and finally an inflected example: (7.18; 51[44].19).

In sum, the transcriptions are a good index to the book’s textual-linguistic makeup.

THE NETS TRANSLATION OF IEREMIAS

This translation aims to be a faithful representation of the Greek text, including many of the warts one finds along the way. In that light the reader should not be surprised to encounter from time to time less than felicitous or even questionable English. For example, since the use of pleonastic adverbs and pronouns is characteristic of the translator’s isomorphism, we have tried to mimic this usage without, we hope, producing unintelligible English. As a result, 11.11 e.g., reads “Behold I am bringing evil upon this people from which they will not be able to escape from it” rather than without the final two words. The translation is therefore often one of formal equivalence, reflective of the relationship deemed to exist between the Greek and its Hebrew source.

In an effort to capture the distinctiveness of some of the key, recurring formulae in Ieremias, we have opted for “This is what the Lord says” and “says the Lord” in distinction from “Thus did the Lord say” and “quoth the Lord” . Though “quoth” is admittedly not current English usage and in form is said to be past tense, it has the distinct advantage of underscoring the quotative use of ⁵.

Though NETS has followed the NRSV in its formatting of Hebrew prose in distinction from poetry, this should not be taken to mean either that the Greek translator made a conscious distinction between the two or that the Greek text contains poetry.

In pursuance of NETS policy, footnotes have been kept to a minimum, though we have supplied certain helps to the English reader that would not have been available to a Greek reader.

EDITORIAL DETAIL

Since Ziegler’s critical edition rather than Rahlfs’ Handausgabe has functioned as base text, the numbering of chapters and verses is that of Ziegler. For the most part Ziegler and Rahlfs coincide, but there are a few wrinkles:

Zi 9.1–26	= Ra 8.23–9.25
Zi 10.5a	= Ra 10.9a
Zi 26.1	= Ra 25.20
Zi 26.1	= Ra 26.2
Zi 29.1–23	= Ra 29.1–16
Zi 29.8–23	= Ra 30.1–16
Zi 30.1–16	= Ra 30.17–33
Zi 32.1–24	= Ra 32.15–38
Zi 34.1–18	= Ra 34.2–22

ALBERT PIETERSMA and MARC SAUNDERS

1 The dictum of God which came to Ieremias the son of Chelkias of the priests, who was living in Anathoth in the land of Beniamin; ²a word of God which came to him in the days of King Iosias son of Amos of Iouda, in the thirteenth year of his reign. ³And it came in the days of King Ioakim son of Iosias of Iouda, until the eleventh year of King Sedekias son of Iosias of Iouda, until the captivity of Ierousalem in the fifth month.

⁴ And a word of the Lord came to him, saying^a,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew
         you,

and before you came forth from the womb,
         I had consecrated you;
a prophet to nations I had made you.”

⁶ And I said, “You That Are, Sovereign, Lord! Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am rather young.” ⁷And the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am rather young,’

because you shall go to all to whom I send
         you,

and you shall speak according to all I
         command you.

⁸ Do not be afraid before them,
because I am with you to deliver you,
                                    says the Lord.”

⁹ And the Lord stretched out his hand to me and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have given my words to your
         mouth.

¹⁰ Behold, today I have appointed you over
         nations and over kingdoms,

to uproot and to pull down and to
         destroy

and to rebuild and to plant.

11 And a word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Ieremiasa, what do you see?” And I said, “A staff of nut wood.” ¹²And the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watchful over my words to perform them.” ¹³And a word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, “What do you see?” And I said, “A cauldron being heated, and its face^b is from the north.”

14 And the Lord said to me: From the face of the north evil shall flare up against all the inhabitants of the land, ¹⁵for behold, I am summoning all the kingdoms from the north of the earth, says the Lord, and they shall come, and they shall set, each his throne against the entrances of the gates of Ierousalem and against all its surrounding walls and against all the cities of Iouda. ¹⁶And I will speak to them with judgment about all their wickedness, how they forsook me and burned incense to foreign gods and did obeisance to the works of their own hands. ¹⁷And you, gird up your loins, and stand up, and tell them everything that I command you. Do not be afraid by their presence, nor be terrified before them, because I am with you to deliver you,

says the Lord.

¹⁸ Behold, I have made you in this very day like a strong city and like a strong bronze wall, to all the kings of Iouda and its rulers and the people of the land. ¹⁹And they will fight you, and they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you to deliver you,

says the Lord.

2 ² And he said, This is what the Lord says: I remembered the mercy of your youth and the love of your growing up, how you followed the holy one of Israel, says the Lord. and the love of your growing up,

how you followed the holy one of Israel,
                                               says the Lord.

³ [Israel was holy to the Lord,]
the firstfruit of his products.

All who eat him will err;
evil will come upon them,
                                               says the Lord.

4 Hear a word of the Lord, O house of Iakob and the whole paternal family of the house of Israel. ⁵This is what the Lord says:

What error did your fathers find in me
that they stood far from me

and went after worthless things and became
         worthless themselves?

⁶ And they did not say, “Where is the Lord
who brought us up out of the land of
         Egypt,

who led us in the wilderness,
in a land boundless and trackless,

in a land waterless and fruitless,
in a land that nothing passed in it
and no person settled there?”

⁷ And I brought you into Carmel
that you eat its fruit and its good things.

And you entered, and you defiled my land
and made my heritage an abomination.

⁸ The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
and those who hold fast to the law did
         not know me,

and the shepherds would act impiously
         toward me,

and the prophets would prophesy by the
goddess Baal

and went after what does not profit.

⁹ Therefore once more I will go to law with
         you,
                                               says the Lord.

and I will go to law with your sons’ sons,

¹⁰ for cross to islands of Chettiim and see,
and send to Kedar and examine with care,
and see if such things have happened:

¹¹ Will nations change their gods?
And these are no gods.

But my people have changed their glory
for one from which they will not profit.

¹² The sky was appalled at this
and shuddered more and more,
                                               says the Lord.

¹³ because my people in fact committed two
         evils:

they forsook me, fountain of living water,

and they dug out cracked cisterns for
         themselves

that will not be able to hold water.

¹⁴ Surely Israel is not a slave or a homebred one?
Why has he become plunder?

¹⁵ Lions would roar against him
and gave forth their voice,

who turned his land into a wilderness,
and his cities were torn down,
to the point that they are not inhabited.

¹⁶ And sons of Memphis and Taphnas knew
         you
and used to mock you.

⁽¹⁷⁾ Has not your abandoning of me brought
         about these things for you?
                      ⁽¹⁷⁾says the Lord, your God.

¹⁸ And now, what do you have to do with the
         road to Egypt,
to drink the water of Geon?

And what do you have to do with the road
         to the Assyrians,
to drink the water of rivers?

¹⁹ Your apostasy will discipline you,
and your wickedness will convict you.

Both know and see that it is bitter
for you to forsake me,
                              says the Lord, your God,

and I took no pleasure in you,
                            says the Lord, your God.

²⁰ because long ago you shattered your yoke
and burst your bonds,
and you said, “I will not be a slave,

but I will go on every high hill
and under every shady tree;
there I will sprawl in my whoredom.”

²¹ Yet I planted you as a fruitful vine,
from pure stock.

How did you turn to bitterness,
you foreign vine?

²² Though you wash yourself with nitre
and multiply herbs^a for yourself,

you have become stained by your injustices
         before me,
                                               says the Lord.

²³ How will you say, “I was not defiled,
and I did not go after the goddess Baal”?

Look at your ways in the common burial
         place
and know what you did.

Her voice cried out in the evening.

²⁴ She widened her ways to the waters of the
         wilderness;

she was ^bwindborne^b
by the cravings of her soul.

She was handed over.
Who will turn her back?

None who seek her will toil hard;
in her humiliation they will find her.

²⁵ Turn your foot from a rough way
and your throat from thirst.

But she said, “I will play the man,”
because she had loved foreigners
and would go after them.

²⁶ Like a thief’s shame when he is caught,
so the sons of Israel shall be shamed,

they and their kings and their rulers
and their priests and their prophets.

²⁷ They said to the tree, “You are my father,” and to the stone, “You gave me birth.”

And they turned backs to me,
and not their faces.

And in the time of their trouble they will
         say,
“Rise up, and save us!”

²⁸ And where are your gods
that you made for yourself,

if they will rise up and save you
in your time of trouble?—

because according to the number of your
         cities
were your gods, O Iouda,

and according to the number of
         Ierousalem’s streets
they were sacrificing to the goddess Baal.

²⁹ Why do you speak to me?
You all acted impiously,
and you all acted lawlessly against me,
                                               says the Lord.

³⁰ In vain I have struck your children;
discipline you did not accept.

A dagger devoured your prophets
like a ravening lion, and you did not fear.

³¹ Hear a word of the Lord!
This is what the Lord says:

Surely I have not become a wilderness to
         Israel
or a dried-out land?

Why did my people say, “We will not be
         ruled,
and we will come to you no more”?

³² Surely a bride will not forget her
         adornment,
and a virgin her breast band?

Yet my people forgot me,
days without number.

³³ Why is it that you will take exceptional care
in your ways to seek affection?

Not so, but in fact you acted wickedly
to defile your ways.

³⁴ Also on your hands was found blood of
         innocent souls.

I did not find them in trenches
but at every oak.

³⁵ And you said, “I am innocent;
only let his anger be turned from me.”

Behold, I am going to law with you
for saying, “I did not sin.”

³⁶ Whatever did you greatly despise
so as to repeat your ways?

And you shall be put to shame by Egypt
as you were put to shame by Assour,

³⁷ because also from there you will come away,
and your hands will be on your head,

because the Lord has rejected your hope,
and you will not prosper through it.

3 If a man dismisses his wife
  and she goes from him

and becomes another man’s,
surely, if she returns, she will not return
         any more to him?

Surely when she becomes polluted,
that woman will be polluted?

And you have played the whore with many
         shepherds,

and would you return to me?
                                     says the Lord.

² Raise your eyes straight ahead, and see!
Where have you not been contaminated?

By the ways you have sat for them
like a desolate crow.

And you polluted the land
with your whoring and wickedness.

³ And you had many shepherds
as an obstacle to yourself;

you got a harlot’s look;
you behaved shamelessly toward all.

⁴ Did you not, as it were, call me Home
and Father and Originator of your
         maidenhood?

⁵ Surely, it^a will not remain forever,
nor will it^a be maintained to victory?

Behold, you spoke,
and you did these evils, and you prevailed.

6 And the Lord said to me in the days of King Iosias: Have you seen what the settlement^b of Israel did to me? They went to every high mountain and under every woodland tree and played the whore there. ⁷And I said after she did all these things, “Return to me,” but she did not return, and faithless Iouda saw her faithlessness. ⁸And I saw that for everything in which the settlement^b of Israel was caught, [in which she committed adultery], and I sent her away and gave her a document of dismissal, and faithless Iouda did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. ⁹And her whoredom came to nothing, and she committed adultery with tree and stone. ¹⁰And in all these things faithless Iouda did not return to me with her whole heart, but only in pretense.

11 And the Lord said to me: Israel has justified his soul vis-à-vis faithless Iouda. ¹²Go, and read these words toward the north, and you will say:

Return to me, settlement^b of Israel,
                                               says the Lord,

and I will not set my face against you,
because merciful am I,
                                               says the Lord,

and I will not cherish wrath against you
         forever.

¹³ Only acknowledge your injustice,
that you acted impiously against the Lord
         your God

and poured out your ways to foreigners
         under every woodland tree,
but you did not obey my voice,
                                               says the Lord.

¹⁴ Return, O apostate sons,
                                               says the Lord, for I will be your lord,

and I will take you, one from a city and two
         from a paternal family,
and I will bring you into Sion.

15 And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, and in shepherding they will shepherd you with skill. ¹⁶And it will be, if you multiply and increase in the land, in those days, says the Lord, they shall no longer say, “Ark of the covenant of the holy one of Israel.” It shall not come up in the heart; it shall not be named nor be considered, and it shall not be made again. ¹⁷In those days and at that time they shall call Ierousalem “The Lord’s throne,” and all the nations shall be gathered into her, and they shall no longer walk after the notions of their own evil heart. ¹⁸In those days the house of Iouda shall join the house of Israel, and they shall come to the same place from a land of the north and from all the countries to the land that I gave their fathers for a heritage.

¹⁹ And I said, “May it be, O Lord,”
because I will make you as children

and will give you a choice land
as a heritage of God Almighty of
         nations

and I said, “You will call me Father
and will not be turned away from me.”

²⁰ Instead, as a woman is faithless toward her
         mate,

so the house of Israel was faithless toward
me,
                                       says the Lord.

²¹ From lips was heard a voice of weeping
and of pleading of Israel’s sons,

because they did wrong in their ways,
they forgot their holy God.

²² Return, O sons who are given to turning,
and I will heal your fractures.

“We here will be yours,
because you are the Lord, our God.

²³ Truly the hills and the power of the
         mountains

were a delusion,

but through the Lord, our God,
is the salvation of Israel.

24 “But from our youth Shame has devoured the labors of our fathers, their sheep and their bull calves and their sons and their daughters. ²⁵We lay down in our shame, and our dishonor covered us; for we have sinned against our God, we and our fathers, from our youth until this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

4 If Israel returns,
                                               says the Lord,

to me he shall return,

if he removes his abominations from his
         mouth

and shows reverence because of my
presence

² and if he swears, “The Lord lives!”
with truth in judgment and in
         uprightness,

nations shall also bless in him,
and in him they shall praise God in
         Ierousalem,

³ because this is what the Lord says to the
         men of Iouda and to the inhabitants
         of Ierousalem:

Renew for yourselves what has been made
         new,
and do not sow among thorns.

⁴ Be circumcised to your God,
and remove the foreskin of your heart,
O men of Iouda and inhabitants of
         Ierousalem,

or else my anger goes forth like fire
and will blaze forth, and there will be no
         one to quench

because of the evil of your doings.

5 Declare in Iouda, and let it be heard in Ierou-salem; say:

Give a sign with a trumpet in the land,
and cry greatly; say:

“Gather together, and let us enter
into the walled cities!”

⁶ Take up, and flee to Sion;
hurry, do not stop,

because I am bringing evil from the north,
and a great destruction.

⁷ A lion has gone up from its lair;
an utter destroyer of nations has set out,
and he has gone out from his place

to make the land a desolation,
and cities will be ruined,
to the point they are not inhabited.

⁸ For these things put on sackcloth,
and lament and wail,

for the anger of the Lord has not turned
         away from us.

⁹ And it shall be on that day, says the Lord, that the heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the rulers, and the priests shall be amazed, and the prophets astounded. ¹⁰And I said, “You That Are, O Sovereign, Lord! So then, when misleading you misled this people and Ierousalem, saying, ‘There shall be peace.’ And behold, the dagger reached as far as their life.”

11 At that time they will say to this people and to Ierousalem: There is a spirit of wandering in the wilderness, a way of the daughter of my people not to what is clean nor to what is holy. ¹²A spirit of filling^a will come to me, but now I speak judgments against them.

¹³ Behold, he will come up like a cloud,
and his chariots like a whirlwind;

his horses are swifter than eagles—woe to us, because we are wretched.

¹⁴ O Ierousalem, wash your heart of
         wickedness
so that you may be saved.

How long are thoughts of your trouble
         within you?—

¹⁵ for a voice of one declaring will come from
         Dan,

and trouble will be heard from Mount
Ephraim.

¹⁶ Remind nations, “Behold, they have come!”
Proclaim in Ierousalem,

“Bands come from a land far away,
and they gave forth their voice against the
         cities of Iouda.

¹⁷ They came against her all round like
         watchers of a field,
because you neglected me,
                                               says the Lord.

¹⁸ Your ways and your doings
have done these things to you.

This is your wickedness, because it is bitter,
because it reached your heart.”

¹⁹ My belly, I feel pain in my belly and in the
         faculties of my heart.

My soul quivers with excitement!

My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent,

because my soul heard a trumpet sound,
a cry of war.

²⁰ And distress calls upon disaster,
because the whole land has become
         distressed.

Suddenly the tent has become distressed,
my skins torn up.

²¹ How long will I see people fleeing,
while I hear the sound of trumpets?—

²² “for the leaders of my people did not know
         me;

they are stupid sons,

and they have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil
but did not know how to do good.”

²³ I looked on the earth, and behold, there was
         nothing,

and to the sky, and it had no lights.

²⁴ I saw the mountains, and they were
         trembling,
and all the hills were being disturbed.

²⁵ I looked, and behold, there was no human,
and all the birds of the air were being
         terrified.

²⁶ I saw, and behold, Carmel was a wilderness,
and all the cities burned up before the
         Lord,

and before the wrath of his anger they
were annihilated.

27 This is what the Lord says: The whole land shall be a wilderness; yet I will not make a full end.

²⁸ For these things let the earth mourn,
and let the sky above grow black,

for I have spoken, and I will not repent;

I rushed out, and I will not turn back
from it^a.

²⁹ At the noise of horseman and bent bow
every country withdrew;

they crawled into the caves, and they hid in
         groves,

and they climbed upon rocks;

every city was forsaken;

no person lives in them.

³⁰ And you, what will you do if you dress in
         scarlet

and you deck yourself with gold
ornaments

and if you anoint your eyes with
antimony?

In vain is your adorning.
Your lovers rejected you;
they will seek your soul,

³¹ because I heard a sound of your groaning,
         as of one in labor,
as of one bringing forth her first child;

the sound of daughter Sion will be
         dissolved,
and she will let fall her hands;

“Woe is me, for my soul is failing for those
         killed!”

5 Run about in the streets of Ierousalem,
    and see, and take note,

and search in its squares,
if there be found one

who practices justice
and seeks faithfulness,

and I will be gracious to them,
                                               says the Lord.

² They say, “The Lord lives.”
Are they therefore not swearing lies?

³ O Lord, your eyes—are they not on
         faithfulness?

You have struck them,
but they were not in trouble;

you have consumed them,
but they did not want to take correction.

They have made their faces harder than
         rock,
and they did not want to turn back.

⁴ And I said, “Perhaps they are poor;
that’s why they were not able,

because they did not know the way of the
         Lord
and divine judgment.”

⁵ I will go to the prominent
and speak to them,

because they were acquainted with the way
         of the Lord
and divine judgment,

and behold, they all alike had broken the
         yoke;
they had burst the bonds.

⁶ Therefore a lion from the forest struck them,
and a wolf right up to the houses
         destroyed them,

and a leopard watched against their cities;
all who go out of them shall be hunted—

because they multiplied their impieties,
they prevailed in their digressions.

⁷ For which of these should I be merciful to
         you?

Your sons have forsaken me

and would swear by those who are no
gods.

And I fed them,
and they were committing adultery
and would lodge in houses of prostitutes.

⁸ They were lusty stallions,
each neighing for his fellow’s wife.

⁹ Surely I shall not fail to visit for these
things?
                                               says the Lord,

or shall my soul not take vengeance

on such a nation?

¹⁰ Go up upon her battlements, and raze,
but do not make a full end;

leave behind her under-props,
because they are the Lord’s,

¹¹ because in breaking faith, the house of Israel
         and the house of Iouda
broke faith with me.

¹² They lied to their Lord
and said, “These things are not so.

No evil will come upon us,
and we shall not see dagger and famine.

¹³ Our prophets became wind,
and a word of the Lord was not in them.

Thus shall it be to them!”

¹⁴ Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says:

Because you spoke this utterance,

behold, I have given my words in your
         mouth as a fire

and this people as wood, and it shall
devour them.

¹⁵ Behold, I am bringing upon you
a nation from far away, O house of Israel,
                                               says the Lord,

a nation [the sound of] whose language you
         will not understand.

¹⁶ All are strong,

¹⁷ and they shall devour your harvest and your
         food,

and they shall devour your sons and your
daughters,

and they shall devour your sheep and your
         bull calves,

and they shall devour your vineyards

and your fig groves and your olive groves,

and they shall thresh by sword
your fortified cities in which you trust in
         them.

18 And it shall be in those days, says the Lord, your^a God, I will not make a full end of you. ¹⁹And it shall be when you say, “Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?” then you shall say to them, “Because you were a slave to foreign gods in your land, so you shall be a slave to foreigners in a land that is not yours.”

²⁰ Declare these things to the house of Iakob,
and let it be heard in Iouda:

²¹ Do hear these things, O foolish and
         heartless people;

eyes they have and do not see,

ears they have and do not hear.

²² Will you not fear me?
                                               says the Lord,

or will you not show reverence before
me

who sets sand as boundary for the sea?
A perpetual ordinance, and it will not
         transgress it,

and it will toss and will not be able,
and its waves will roar, and it will not
         transgress it.

²³ But this people had a noncompliant and
         disobedient heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.

²⁴ And they did not say in their heart,
“Do let us fear the Lord our God,

who gives us rain,
early rain and late rain,

according to the season of the satisfaction
of the ordinance of harvesting,

and he kept it for us.”

²⁵ Your acts of lawlessness have turned these
         away,

and your sins have distanced good things
from you,

²⁶ because impious ones were found among
         my people,

and they set traps to ruin men,

and they would catch them.

²⁷ As a trap, when set up, is full of birds,
so their houses are full of treachery;

therefore they have become great and rich,

²⁸     and they transgressed justice,

they did not judge the cause of the
         orphan,

and the cause of the widow they would not
         judge.

²⁹ Surely I shall not fail to visit for these
         things?
                                               says the Lord.

or shall my soul not take vengeance on
such a nation?

³⁰ Astonishment and horrible things
have occurred in the land:

³¹ the prophets prophesy what is wrong,
and the priests seized with their hands,

and my people loved to have it so.
And what will you do hereafter?

6 Prevail, O sons of Beniamin,
   from the midst of Ierousalem!

And in Thekoue signal with the trumpet,
and over Baiththacharma raise a signal,

because evil has popped up from the north
and it is becoming a great destruction.

² And your loftiness, O daughter Sion,
shall be removed.

³ Shepherds and their flocks shall come into
         her.

And they shall pitch tents at her all
around,

and they shall pasture, each with his
hand.

⁴ “Prepare for war against her; rise up,
and let us go up against her at noon!”

“Woe to us, for the day has declined,
because the shadows of the evening fail!”

⁵ “Rise up, and let us go up by night
and destroy her foundations!”—

⁶ because this is what the Lord says:

Cut down her trees;
pour out a force against Ierousalem.

Ah false city, there is nothing but oppression
         within her.

⁷ As a cistern keeps water fresh,
so she keeps fresh her wickedness;

impiety and distress will be heard within
         her,
before her always.

With toil and whip ⁸you will be disciplined,
         O Ierousalem,
lest my soul stand away from you,

lest I make you an untrodden land
which will not be inhabited,

⁹ because this is what the Lord says:

Glean, glean like a vine the remnants of
         Israel;

turn back like the grape gatherer to his
         basket.

¹⁰ To whom should I speak and give warning,
and he will hear?

Behold, their ears are uncircumcised,
and they cannot hear.

Behold, the dictum of the Lord was to them
         an object of scorn;

they will not want it at all.

¹¹ And I filled my anger,
and I held back and did not finish them.

I will pour it out on infants outside
and on a gathering of young men as well,

because husband and wife shall be seized,
an older person with fullness of days.

¹² And their houses shall be turned over to
         others,
fields and their wives together,

because I will stretch out my hand
against the inhabitants of this land,
                                               says the Lord,

¹³ because from their small even to their great,
all carried out lawless deeds;

from priest even to pseudo-prophet,
all produced lies.

¹⁴ And they were doctoring the fracture of my
         people with contempt

and saying, “Peace, peace,”

and where is peace?

¹⁵ They were put to shame, because they
         failed;

yet they were not ashamed like people
being put to shame,

and they did not know their disgrace.

Therefore they shall fall in their fall,
and they shall perish in a time of
         visitation,
                                               says the Lord.

¹⁶ This is what the Lord says:

Stand at the roads, and see,
and ask for the ancient paths of the
         Lord,

and see what the good way is, and walk in
         it,

and you will find purification for your
souls.

And they said, “We will not walk in it.”

¹⁷ I have appointed sentinels for you:
“Hear the sound of the trumpet!”

And they said, “We will not hear.”

¹⁸ Therefore, the nations heard,
and those that were shepherding their
         flocks.

¹⁹ Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing evil on
         this people,
the fruit of their turning away,

because they did not hold on to my words
and they rejected my law.

²⁰ Why do you bring me frankincense from
         Saba
and cinnamon from a land far away?

Your whole burnt offerings are not
         acceptable,
and your sacrifices did not gratify me.

²¹ Therefore this is what the Lord says:

Behold, I am giving to this people weakness,
and they shall be weak with it,

fathers and sons together;
a neighbor and his fellow shall perish.

²² This is what the Lord says:

Behold, a people is coming from the north,
and nations will stir from the farthest
         part of the earth.

²³ They will grasp bow and spear;
bold it is and will show no mercy;
its sound is like a roaring sea;

on horses and chariots it will draw up in
         battle order like a fire,

for battle against you, O daughter Sion!

²⁴ “We have heard news of them;
our hands fell helpless;

anguish took hold of us,
pains as of one giving birth.

²⁵ Do not go out into a field,
and do not walk on the roads,

because a sword of the enemies sojourns on
         every side.”

²⁶ O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth;
sprinkle with ashes;

make for yourself a mourning for a beloved,
a most pitiable lamentation:

because suddenly distress will come upon us.

²⁷ I have given you as ^aa tester^a among tested
         peoples,

and you will know me when I test their
way.

²⁸ All are noncompliant,
going about with slanders;

bronze and iron,
all of them have been corrupted.

²⁹ Bellows failed from a fire;
lead failed;

in vain does a silversmith coin silver;
their wickedness did not melt.

³⁰ Call them “rejected silver,”
because the Lord has rejected them.

7 ²Hear a word of the Lord, all Judea. ³This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. ⁴Do not trust in yourselves with deceptive words, because they will not benefit you at all, when you say: “A shrine of the Lord, a shrine of the Lord it is.”

5 Because if in amending, you amend your ways and your doings, and in acting you act with justice between a man and between his fellow ⁶ and do not oppress guest and orphan and widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place and do not go after foreign gods to your own hurt, ⁷I will also cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers and forever.

8 But if you trust in deceptive words, whereby you will not benefit, ⁹and murder and commit adultery and steal and swear wrongly and offer incense to the goddess Baal and go after foreign gods that you do not know, ¹⁰so that it be ill for you, and if you came and stood before me in the house, where my name has been called on it, and you said, “We have kept away from doing all these abominations”—¹¹surely my house, there where my name has been called on it, has not become a den of robbers before you? And I, behold, I have seen it, says the Lord, ¹²because go to my place which was in Selo, there where I made my name encamp formerly, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. ¹³And now, because you have done all these deeds and I spoke to you and you did not hear me and I called you and you did not answer, ¹⁴I will also do to the house, where my name is called on it, in which you trust in it, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, just what I did to Selo. ¹⁵And I will cast out you from before me, just as I cast out your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.

16 And as for you, do not keep praying about this people, and do not request to petition about them, and do not keep making vows, and do not approach me concerning them, because I will not listen. ¹⁷Or do you not see what they themselves are doing in the cities of Iouda and in the streets of Ierousalem? ¹⁸Their sons gather wood, and their fathers burn a fire, and their women knead dough to make cakes for the host of the sky, and they poured out libations to foreign gods in order to provoke me to anger. ¹⁹Are they not provoking me? says the Lord. Is it not themselves so that their faces may be ashamed? ²⁰Therefore this is what the Lord says: Behold, my wrath and anger are being poured on this place, both on human beings and on animals and on every tree of the field and on the produce of the ground, and it will burn and not be quenched.

21 This is what the Lord says: Gather your whole burnt offerings with your sacrifices, and eat meat, ²²because in the day that I brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them and did not command them concerning whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. ²³But this dictum I commanded them, saying, “Obey my voice, and I will become a god to you, and you shall become a people to me, and walk in all my ways, which I command you, so that it may be well with you.” ²⁴And they did not obey me, and they did not turn their ear, but they walked by the notions of their evil heart, and they became backward and not forward. ²⁵From the day that their fathers came out of the land of Egypt even until this day, I have also sent out all my slaves the prophets to you by day, and early in the morning I also sent, ²⁶and they did not obey me, and they did not turn their ear, and they stiffened their necks worse than their fathers.

28 And you shall speak this word to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not accept discipline; faithfulness has failed from their mouth.

²⁹ Shear your head, and throw away^b,
and take a lamentation on your lips,

because the Lord has discarded and
         rejected
the generation that did these things,

30 because the sons of Iouda have done evil^c before me, says the Lord; they have arrayed their abominations in the house where my name is called on it, to defile it. ³¹And they built the altar^d of Tapheth, which is in the valley of Hennom’s son, to burn their sons and their daughters with fire—which I did not command them, and I did not intend it in my heart. ³²Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and they shall no longer say Altar^d of Tapheth and Valley of Hennom’s Son, but Valley of the Slain, and they will bury in Tapheth, because there is no room. ³³And the corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air and for the animals of the earth, and there will not be one to frighten them away. ³⁴And I will abolish a sound of people making mirth and a sound of people rejoicing, a voice of bridegroom and a voice of bride from the cities of Iouda and from the streets of Ierousalem, because all the land shall become a desolation.

8 At that time, says the Lord, they shall bring the bones of the kings of Iouda and the bones of its rulers and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Ierousalem out of their tombs, ²and they shall air them to the sun and to the moon [and to all the stars] and to all the host of the sky, which things they have loved and been slaves to and which they have followed after them and which they have clung to and which they did obeisance to them. They shall not be mourned and shall not be buried, and they shall be an example on the surface of the ground, ³because they chose death over life, even for all the remnants that remain of that generation in every place, there where I have driven them—

⁴ because this is what the Lord says:

He that falls, does he not rise up,
and he that turns away, does he not
         return?

⁵ Why has my people turned away
in a shameless turning away

and were in the grip of their preference
and did not want to return?

⁶ Do give ear, and hear.
Will they not speak in this manner;

“There is no person that repents of his
         wickedness,
saying, ‘What have I done?’ ”

The runner stopped from his own course,
like a sweating horse in his neighing.

⁷ Even the hasida^a in the sky knew its time;

turtledove and swallow, agour^b [sparrows]
observe the times of their arrival,

but my people did not know
the judgments of the Lord.

⁸ How will you say, “We are wise,
and the law of the Lord is with us?”

A false pen has become of no use to scribes.

⁹ Wise were put to shame
and were terrified and caught,

because they have discarded the word of the
         Lord.

What wisdom is in them?

¹⁰ Therefore I will give their wives to others
and their fields to heirs.

¹³ And they will gather their produce,
                                               says the Lord;

there are no grapes on the vines,

and there are no figs on the fig trees;

even the leaves have fallen off.

¹⁴ For what do we sit still?

Gather together, and let us go into the
         fortified cities
and be cast out,

because God has cast us out
and has given us water with gall to drink,
because we have sinned before him.

¹⁵ We gathered for peace, and there was no
         good,

for a time of healing, and behold,
exertion.

¹⁶ From Dan we will hear the sound of the
         speed of his horses;

at the sound of the neighing of his
cavalry

the whole land quaked.

And he will come and devour land and all
         that fills it,

city and those who live in it.

¹⁷ For behold, I am sending out against you
         deadly snakes
that cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you.

¹⁸ Incurable things with the pain of your
         puzzled heart.

¹⁹ Behold, a voice of the daughter of my
         people

from a land far away:

“Is the Lord not in Sion?
Or is there no king there?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with
         their carved images

and with strange vanities?”)

²⁰ “Summer ended; harvest passed,
and we were not saved.”

²¹ Because of a fracture of the daughter of my
         people

I was made dizzy^c; dismay has taken hold
of me,

pains as one giving birth.

²² Is there no pine resin in Galaad,
or is a physician not there?

Why has the healing of the daughter of my
         people
not come about?

9 Who will give my head water
   and my eyes a fountain of tears,

and I shall bewail my people day and night,
the slain of the daughter of my people?

² Who would give me in the wilderness
a remote lodging place,

and I shall leave my people
and go away from them?

Because they all commit adultery, a band of
         faithless they are.

³ And they bent their tongue like a bow;
falsehood and not faith grew strong in
         the land,

because they proceeded from evil to evil,
and me they did not know.

⁴ Each of you, beware of his fellow,
and put no trust in their kin,

because every brother will trip up with the
         heel and every friend will go around
deceitfully.

⁵ Each will mock at his friend;
truth they will never speak;

their tongue has learned to speak lies;
they committed injustice
and did not pause so as to return.

⁶ Usury upon usury, deceit upon deceit!
They did not want to know me.

⁷ Therefore this is what the Lord says:

Behold, I will refine them and test them,
because I will act in the face of the
         wickedness of the daughter of my
         people.

⁸ Their tongue is a wounding arrow;
the words of their mouth are deceitful.

He speaks peaceably to his fellow
but inwardly has enmity.

⁹ Surely I shall not fail to visit for these
         things?
                                               says the Lord,

or shall my soul not take vengeance on
such a people?

¹⁰ Take up wailing for the mountains,
and a lamentation regarding the paths of
         the wilderness,

because they failed to the point that there
         are no people;
they did not hear a sound of existence;

from the birds of the air even to animals
they departed; they went away.

¹¹ And I will render Ierousalem a settlement of
         migrants
and a lair of dragons,

and I will make the cities of Iouda an
         annihilation,
to the point that it is uninhabited.

12 Who is the intelligent person? Let him also understand this, and him to whom a word of the mouth of the Lord has come, let him declare it to you. For what reason did the land perish, was kindled like a wilderness, to the point that nothing passes through it? ¹³And the Lord said to me: Because they forsook my law that I gave before them, they also have not obeyed my voice ¹⁴but have gone after what pleases their own evil heart and after the idols, which their fathers taught them. ¹⁵Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Behold, I will feed them anguish and will give them water with gall to drink. ¹⁶And I will scatter them among the nations [to] whom they and their fathers did not know, and I will send the dagger upon them until I have consumed them with it, ¹⁷says the Lord.

Call the mourning women, and let them
         come,
and send for the skilled women,
and let them speak loudly,

¹⁸ and let them raise a lament over us,
and let our eyes bring down tears,
and let our eyelids flow with water,

¹⁹ because a sound of pity was heard in Sion:
“How we have suffered hardship!
We were utterly shamed,

because we have abandoned the land
and we have cast down our quarters.”

²⁰ Do hear, O women, a divine word,
and let your ears accept words of his
         mouth,

and teach to your daughters a dirge,
and a woman to her companion a lament

²¹ “because death has come up through our
         windows,
has entered into our land,

to destroy infants outside
and young men from the squares.

²² And human corpses shall become an
         example
upon the surface of the plain of the land,

and like grass behind a mower,
and there shall be no one to gather.”

23 This is what the Lord says: Let not the wise boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty boast in his might, and let not the wealthy boast in his wealth, ²⁴but let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows that I am the Lord when I do mercy and justice and righteousness in the earth, because in these things is my will, says the Lord.

25 Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will visit on all circumcised their foreskin^a: ²⁶on Egypt and on Judea and on Edom and on the sons of Ammon and on the sons of Moab and on every one who shaves all around what is on his face, those who live in the wilderness, because all the nations are uncircumcised in the flesh and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in their heart.

10 Hear a word of the Lord that he spoke to you, O house of Israel. ²This is what the Lord says:

Do not learn according to the ways of the
         nations,

and do not be afraid of the signs of the
sky,

because they are afraid of them ^bto their
faces^b,

³ because the precepts of the nations are vain:

there is a tree from the forest, cut down,
a work of a craftsman, and a molten
         image.

⁴ They have been beautified with silver and
         gold;

they fastened them with hammers and
         nails,

and they shall not be moved.

^5a Wrought silver it is—they will not walk.

⁹ Beaten silver will come from Tharsis, gold of Mophas

and a hand of goldsmiths—works of
craftsmen all;

they will clothe them in blue and purple.

^5b Raised they will be carried,
because they will not walk.

Do not be afraid of them,
because they shall not do evil,
and there is no good in them.

11 Thus shall you say to them: Let gods who did not make the sky and the earth perish from the earth and from under this sky.

¹² It is the Lord who made the earth by his
         strength,
who set upright the world by his wisdom,

and by his prudence he stretched out the
sky,

¹³ and a quantity of water was in the sky,
and he brought up clouds from the end
         of the earth.

Lightnings he made into rain,
and he brought out light from his
         storehouses.

¹⁴ Every person was stupid, ^aapart from^a
         knowledge;

every goldsmith was put to shame at his
carved images,

because they^b cast lies;
there is no breath in them.

¹⁵ Worthless they are, works of mockery;
at the time of their visitation they shall
         perish.

¹⁶ Such a portion is not Iakob’s;
because he who formed all things,

he is his inheritance;
the Lord is his name.

¹⁷ He gathered your substance from outside,
when it was residing in choice places—

¹⁸ because this is what the Lord says:

Behold, I am tripping up the inhabitants of
         this land with affliction

so that your plague may be discovered.

¹⁹ Woe because of your fracture!
Your plague is painful.

So I said, “Truly this is my wound,
and it seized me.”

²⁰ My tent endured hardship,
and all my skins were torn;

my sons and my sheep are no more;

there is no longer a place for my tent,
a place for my curtains.

²¹ Because the shepherds played the fool
and did not seek out the Lord,

therefore the whole pasture did not
         comprehend,
and they were scattered.

²² A sound of a report! Behold, it is
         coming—

and a great commotion from a land of
the north,

to make the cities of Iouda an annihilation
and a nesting place for sparrows.

²³ I know, O Lord, that a human being’s way is
         not his own,

nor shall a man journey and direct his
journey.

²⁴ Correct us, O Lord, but in just measure
and not in anger so that you may not
         make us few.

²⁵ Pour out your anger on nations that do not
         know you

and on generations that did not call on
your name,

because they have devoured Iakob
and they have consumed him
and his pasture they have made desolate.

11 The word that came from the Lord to Ieremias, saying: ²Hear the words of this covenant. And you shall speak to the men of Iouda and to the inhabitants of Ierousalem. ³And you shall say to them, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Cursed be the person who will not heed the words of this covenant, ⁴which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron smelter, saying, Hear my voice, and do all that I command you. And you shall become a people to me, and I will become a god to you, ⁵that I may establish my oath that I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as this day. And I answered and said, “May it be, Lord.”

6 And the Lord said to me: Read these words in the cities of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem, saying: Hear the words of this covenant and do them. ⁸And they did not.

9 And the Lord said to me: A bond of union was found among the men of Iouda and among the inhabitants of Ierousalem. ¹⁰They have turned back to the injustices of their fathers of former times, who did not want to listen to my words, and behold, they are walking after foreign gods to be slaves to them, and the house of Israel and the house of Iouda have scattered the covenant that I made with their fathers. ¹¹Therefore, this is what the Lord says, Behold, I am bringing evil upon this people from which they will not be able to escape from it, and they will cry out to me, and I will not listen to them. ¹²And the cities of Iouda and the inhabitants of Ierousalem will go and will cry out to the gods to whom they are burning incense to them. Surely, they will save them in the time of their troubles?—¹³because your gods were according to the number of your cities, O Iouda, and according to the number of exits of Ierousalem you have set up altars^c to burn incense to the goddess Baal.

14 And as for you, do not keep praying for this people, and do not keep making a request with petition and prayer on their behalf, because I will not listen at the time they call to me in the time of their trouble. ¹⁵Why has the beloved^a done an abomination in my house? Surely vows and holy flesh will not remove from you your wickedness, or will you escape by means of these things? ¹⁶The Lord called your name a beautiful olive tree, well shaded in appearance; at the sound of its pruning^b the affliction was great on you; its branches were rendered useless. ¹⁷And the Lord, who planted you, pronounced evil against you, in return for the evil of the house of Israel and the house of Iouda, because they have done this to themselves to provoke me to anger by offering incense to the goddess Baal.

¹⁸ O Lord, make it known to me, and I will
         know;
then I saw their doings.

¹⁹ But I, like an innocent lamb
led to be slaughtered, did not know.

They devised an evil scheme against me,
         saying,

“Come, and let us throw wood into his
         bread,

and let us wipe him out from the land of
the living,

and his name will no longer be
remembered!”

²⁰ O Lord, when you judge righteously,
when you test kidneys^c and heart,

may I see your avenging on them,
because to you I have revealed my plea of
         right.

21 Therefore this is what the Lord says in reference to the men of Anathoth, who seek my soul, who say, “You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord; otherwise you will die by our hands”—²²Behold, I will visit upon them; their young men shall die by dagger, and their sons and their daughters shall come to their end by famine, ²³and there shall be no remnant of them, because I will bring evil upon the inhabitants of Anathoth, in the year of their visiting.

12 You are in the right, O Lord,
because I will make my defense to you,
but ^dlet me^d speak of judgments to you.

Why is it that the way of the impious
         prospers?

Why did all who commit acts of
faithlessness thrive?

² You planted them, and they took root;
they bred children and produced fruit;

you are near to their mouths
and far from their kidneys^c.

³ And you, O Lord, you know me;
you have tested my heart before you.

Purify them for a day of their slaughter!

⁴ How long will the land mourn,
and all the grass of the field wither

from the wickedness of those who live in
it?

Animals and birds were annihilated,
because they said, “God will not see our
         ways.”

⁵ Your feet are running, and they undo you;
how will you prepare for horses?

And you trusted in a land of peace;
how will you fare in the roaring of the
         Jordan?—

⁶ because even your kinsfolk and the
         household of your father,

even they have dealt faithlessly with you;

they too shouted; they were gathered
behind you;

do not believe them,
because they will speak good things to
         you.

⁷ I have forsaken my house;
I have let go of my heritage;

I have given my beloved soul
into the hands of her enemies.

⁸ My heritage has become to me
like a lion in a forest;

she has given forth her voice against me—
therefore I hated her.

⁹ Surely my heritage is not a hyena’s cave to
         me
or a cave all around her?

Go, assemble all the animals of the field,
and let them come to eat her.

¹⁰ Many shepherds have destroyed my
         vineyard;
they have defiled my portion;

they rendered my desired portion
an untrodden wilderness.

¹¹ It was made into an annihilation of
         destruction;

on my account the whole land was
         annihilated with annihilation,

because there is not a man who lays it to
heart.

¹² Upon every trail in the wilderness spoilers
         have come,

because a dagger of the Lord will devour
from one end of the land to the other
         end of the land;

there is no peace for any flesh.

¹³ Sow wheat, and reap thorns.
Their farms will not profit them.

Be ashamed of your boasting,
of reproaching before the Lord—

14 because this is what the Lord says concerning all the evil neighbors who touch my heritage that I have allotted to my people Israel: Behold, I am tearing them from their land, and Iouda I will cast out from among them. ¹⁵And it shall be after I have cast them out, I will turn and have mercy on them, and I will settle them, each in his heritage and each in his land. ¹⁶And it shall be, if when learning they learn the way of my people, to swear by my name, “The Lord lives,” as they taught my people to swear by the goddess Baal, and they shall be built up in the midst of my people. ¹⁷But if they do not turn, I will even remove that nation with removal and destruction.

13 This is what the Lord says, “Go, and acquire for yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, and it shall not pass through water.” ²And I acquired the loincloth according to the word of the Lord and put it on my loins. ³And a word of the Lord came to me, saying, ⁴“Take the loincloth that is on your loins, and rise up, and go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock.” ⁵And I hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. ⁶And it happened after many days that the Lord said to me, “Rise up, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” ⁷And I went to the Euphrates river and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place, there where I had hidden it. And behold, it had been utterly destroyed—which will be good for nothing.

8 And a word of the Lord came to me saying: This is what the Lord says: ⁹Just so I will destroy the pride of Iouda and the pride of Ierousalem, ¹⁰this great pride, those who refuse to obey my words and have gone after foreign gods to be slaves to them and to do obeisance to them, and they shall be like this loincloth, which shall be good for nothing, ¹¹because as the loincloth clings to a person’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Iouda cling to myself in order that they might be for me a people of name, both as a boast and as a glory. And they did not listen to me.

12 And you shall say to this people: Every wineskin shall be filled with wine. And it shall be if they say to you, “Surely, in knowing shall we not know that every wine-skin will be filled with wine?” ¹³And you shall say to them: This is what the Lord says: Behold, I am filling the inhabitants of this land—both their kings, the sons of Dauid who sit on their throne and the priests and the prophets and Iouda and all the inhabitants of Ierousalem—with drunkenness. ¹⁴And I will scatter them, a man and his brother, and their fathers and their sons in the same manner; I will not yearn after, says the Lord, and I will not spare or have compassion at their destruction.

¹⁵ Hear, and give ear, and do not be lifted
         up,
because the Lord has spoken.

¹⁶ Give glory to the Lord your God
before he brings darkness

and before your feet stumble
on dark mountains,

and you will wait for light,
and a shadow of death is there,
and they shall be placed in darkness.

¹⁷ If you do not hear,
your soul will weep in secret due to
         pride,

and your eyes will bring down tears,
because the Lord’s flock has been
         smashed.

¹⁸ Say to the king and to those in power:
“Be humbled, and sit down,

because your crown of glory
has been removed from your head.”

¹⁹ The cities toward the south were shut up,
and there was no one to open;

Iouda^a was exiled;
he completed a complete exile.

²⁰ Lift up your eyes, O Ierousalem,
and see those who come from the
         north.

Where is the flock that was given you,
sheep of your glory?

²¹ What will you say when they visit you?
And it was you who taught them lessons
         for rule over you.

Will not pangs take hold of you,
like a woman giving birth?

²² And if you say in your heart,
“Why have these things come against
         me?”

it is for the greatness of your injustice
that your hind parts were uncovered,
that your heels were made a spectacle of.

²³ Will an Ethiopian change his skin,
and a leopard her spots?

And will you be able to do good,
though you have learned evil?

²⁴ And I scattered them like firewood
driven by the wind into the wilderness.

²⁵ This is your lot
and portion for your disobeying of me,
                                               says the Lord,

because you have forgotten me
and hoped in lies.

²⁶ It is I that will reveal your hindquarters to
         your face,
and your dishonor will be seen,

²⁷ both your adultery and your neighing
and the estranging of your prostitution;
on the hills and in the fields I have seen
         your abominations.

Woe to you, O Ierousalem!
Because you were not cleansed behind^b
         me,

how long will it yet be?

14 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias
concerning the drought:

² Judea mourned,
and her gates were emptied,

and they were darkened in the land,
and the cry of Ierousalem went up.

³ And her nobles sent their young men for
         water;

they came to the cisterns and found no
water,

and they returned their vessels empty.

⁴ And the labors of the land failed,
because there was no rain;

farmers were put to shame;
they covered their head.

⁵ Even does in the field gave birth
and forsook ^atheir young^a,
because there was no herbage.

⁶ Wild asses stood by wooded valleys;
they snuffed up wind;

their eyes failed,
because there was no grass.

⁷ If our sins withstood us, O Lord,
act for us for your sake,

because our sins are many before you,
because we have sinned.

⁸ You are Israel’s endurance, O Lord,
and you save in time of trouble;

why have you become like a resident alien
         in the land

and like an indigenous person turning
         aside for lodging?

⁹ Surely you shall not be like a person
         asleep
or like a man not able to save?

And you are among us, O Lord,
and your name has been called upon us;
do not forget us!

¹⁰ Thus says the Lord with reference to this
         people:

They have loved to move their feet,
and they have not spared,

and God found no pleasure in them;
now he will remember their injustice.

11 And the Lord said to me: Do not pray concerning this people for good, ¹²because if they fast, I will not hear their petition, and if they offer whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, I will not have pleasure in them, because by dagger and by famine and by death I will make an end of them.

13 And I said: “You That Are, Lord! Behold, their prophets are prophesying and saying, ‘You shall not see a dagger, nor shall famine be among you, because I bestow truth and peace on the land and in this place.’ “ ¹⁴And the Lord said to me: The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, and I did not command them and did not speak to them, because they are prophesying to you lying visions and divinations and omens and preferences of their own heart. ¹⁵Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who prophesy lies in my name, and I did not send them, who say, “Dagger and famine shall not come on this land”: By a sickly death they shall die, and by famine the prophets shall come to an end. ¹⁶And the people, to them to whom they prophesy, they also shall be thrown out in the streets of Ierousalem, before the dagger and the famine, and there shall be no one to bury them—^band their wives and their sons and their daughters^b. And I will pour out their evil upon them.

¹⁷ And you shall say to them this word:

Bring down upon your eyes tears day and
         night,
and let them not cease,

because the daughter of my people was
         shattered with a fracture
and with a very grievous blow.

¹⁸ If I go out into the plain,
and behold, casualties of a dagger!

And if I enter into the city,
and behold, hardship of famine,

because priest and prophet went to a land
of which they had no knowledge!

¹⁹ Surely when rejecting, you did not reject
         Iouda?

And has your soul departed from Sion?

Why did you strike us,
and there is no healing for us?

We waited for peace, and there was no
         good,

for a time of healing, and behold,
disturbance.

²⁰ We were aware of our sins, O Lord,
injustices of our fathers,
because we have sinned before you.

²¹ Stop for your name’s sake;
do not destroy the throne of your glory;

remember, do not scatter your covenant
with us.

²² Surely, there is no one among idols of the
         nations that brings rain?

And whether the sky will give its
abundance …?

Is it not you yourself?
And we will wait on you,
because it is you who did all these things.

15 And the Lord said to me: If Moyses and Samouel stood before me, my soul would not be toward them. Send this people away, and let them go! ²And it shall be, if they say to you, “Where shall we go?” you shall also say to them: This is what the Lord says:

Those destined for death, to death,
and those destined for a dagger, to a
         dagger;

and those destined for famine,
to famine, and those destined for captivity, to
         captivity.

³ And I will avenge on them four kinds, says the Lord: the dagger for slaughter and the dogs for tearing and the wild animals of the earth and the birds of the air for eating and for corruption. ⁴And

I will hand them over for anguish to all the kingdoms of the earth on account of King Manasse son of Hezekias of Iouda concerning all he did in Ierousalem.

⁵ Who will be sparing over you,
         O Ierousalem,
and who will be in dread over you,

or who will double back for peace for
         you?

⁶ It is you that have turned away from me,
         says the Lord;
you will go backward,

and I will stretch out my hand and destroy
         you,
and I will let them off no more.

⁷ And I will disperse them
in a dispersion in the gates of my people.

I was made childless;
I destroyed my people because of their
         evils.

⁸ Their widows became more numerous
than the sand of the sea;

I have brought against the mother of a
         youth
wretchedness at noonday;

I threw trembling and haste upon her
         suddenly.

⁹ She who bore seven was depleted;
her soul became miserable;

the sun set for her while it was yet midday;
she has been shamed and disgraced.

The rest of them I will give to a dagger
before their enemies.

10 Woe is me, O mother! As whom did you bear me? A man being condemned and at variance with the whole land! I neither owed nor did any one owe me; my strength failed amongst those that curse me. ¹¹May it be so, O Sovereign, while they succeed; otherwise I stood before you in a time of their troubles and in a time of their distress for good against the enemy. ¹²Will iron be known? And your strength is a bronze wrap.

13 And your treasures I will give as plunder, as a payment for all your sins, and in all your borders. ¹⁴And I will make you a slave to your enemies all around in the land that you did not know, because from my anger a fire has blazed forth; it shall burn against you.

¹⁵ O Lord, remember me, and visit me,
and hold me guiltless before my
         persecutors;

do not incline to forbearance.

Know how on your account I received
insult

¹⁶     by those who reject your words.

Make an end of them, and your word will
         be to me gladness
and the joy of my heart,

because your name is called upon me,
O Lord Almighty.

¹⁷ I did not sit in the council of them when
         they were making sport,

but I was cautious before your hand;

I sat alone, because I was filled with
bitterness.

¹⁸ Why do those who pain me prevail over
         me?

My wound is severe;

how shall I be healed?

As it^a came, it became to me
like fake water not having credence.

¹⁹ Therefore this is what the Lord says:

If you return, I will also restore you,
and you shall stand before me.

And if you bring out what is precious from
         what is worthless,
you shall be as my mouth.

And it is they who will turn to you,
and not you who will turn to them.

²⁰ And I will give you to this people
as a fortified bronze wall,

and they will fight against you,
and they shall not prevail against you,

for I am with you to save you

²¹     and to deliver you out of the hand of the
         wicked

and from the hand of the pestilent.

16 And you, do not take a wife, says the Lord God of Israel, ²and no son or daughter shall be born to you in this place, ³because this is what the Lord says concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land: ⁴They shall die by a sickly death. They shall not be lamented, and they shall not be buried; they shall become an example on the surface of the ground, both for the wild animals of the earth and for the birds of the air. By dagger they shall fall, and by famine they shall be brought to an end.

5 This is what the Lord says: Do not enter into their revel, and do not go to lament, and do not bemoan them, because I have removed my peace from this people. ⁶They shall not lament for them, nor shall they make incisions, and they shall not be shaved. ⁷And bread shall not be broken in their mourning, for comfort over the dead; they shall not make him drink a cup for comfort over his father and mother. ⁸You shall not enter into a house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and drink, ⁹for this is what the Lord says, the God of Israel: Behold, I am banishing from this place, before your eyes and in your days, a voice of joy and a voice of gladness, a voice of bridegroom and a voice of bride.

10 And it shall be when you tell this people all these dicta, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord spoken all these evil things against us? What is our injustice? And what is our sin that we have committed before the Lord our God?” ¹¹And you shall say to them: It is because your fathers have forsaken me, says the Lord, and were going after foreign gods and have been subject to them and did obeisance to them and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, ¹²and you have behaved worse than your fathers, and behold, every one of you is following after the things that please your evil heart so as not to obey me. ¹³And I will hurl you from this land into a land that you and your fathers have not known, and there you shall be slaves to other gods who will show you no mercy.

14 Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and they shall no longer say, “The Lord lives who brought the sons of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” ¹⁵but “The Lord lives who brought the house of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries, there where they had been driven.” For I will restore them to their own land that I gave to their fathers.

16 Behold, I am sending many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them, and afterward I will send many hunters, and they shall hunt them on every mountain and on every hill and out of the clefts of the rocks, ¹⁷because my eyes were on all their ways and their acts of injustice were not concealed from my sight. ¹⁸And I will doubly repay their injustices and their sins with which they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their abominations and with their lawless acts, by which they erred against my inheritance.

¹⁹ O Lord, my strength and my help
and my refuge in a day of troubles,

to you shall nations come
from the end of the earth and say:

How have our fathers acquired false idols,
and there is no profit in them!

²⁰ Will a person make for himself gods?
But these are no gods!

21 “Therefore, behold, I will make clear to them at this time my hand and make known to them my power, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”

17 ⁵Cursed is the person who has his hope in
         a human

and will steady the flesh of his arm on
him,

and his heart will stand away from the
Lord.

⁶ And he shall be like a wild tamarisk in the
         wilderness;

he shall not see when good things
come.

And he shall encamp by the seaside, in a
         wilderness,
in a salt land that is not inhabited.

⁷ And blessed is the person who trusts in the
         Lord,
and the Lord shall be his hope.

⁸ And he shall be like a tree thriving beside
         waters,
and it shall send out its roots to moisture.

And it shall not fear when heat comes,
and the trunks on it shall be grove-like;

in a year of drought it shall not fear,
and it shall not cease to produce fruit.

⁹ The heart is deep above all else,
and so^a is man,
and who shall understand him?

¹⁰ I, the Lord, am one who tests hearts
and examines kidneys^b,

to give to each according to his ways
and according to the fruit of his doings.

¹¹ A partridge gathered what she did not hatch.
When one produces his wealth not with
         discretion—

at the midpoint of his days they will leave
         him,
and at his end he will be a fool.

¹² O exalted throne of glory, our sanctity^c!

¹³ O endurance of Israel! O Lord!
Let all who forsake you be put to shame;

let those who have turned away be recorded
         on the earth,

because they have forsaken the fountain
of life, the Lord.

¹⁴ Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved,
because you are my boast.

¹⁵ Behold, it is they that say to me,
“Where is the word of the Lord?
Let it come!”

¹⁶ But I have not tired of following after you,
and man’s day I have not desired;

you understand;
what came from my lips is before you.

¹⁷ Do not become an alienation to me
when you spare me in an evil day.

¹⁸ Let my persecutors be shamed,
and may I not be shamed;

may they be terrified,
and may I not be terrified;

bring on them an evil day;
smash them with a double fracture!

19 This is what the Lord says: Go, and stand in the gates of the sons of your people, by them by which kings of Iouda enter and by them by which they go out and in all the gates of Ierousalem, ²⁰ and you will say to them: Hear a word of the Lord, you kings of Iouda, and all Judea and all Ierousalem, who enter by these gates. ²¹This is what the Lord says: Watch your souls, and do not bear burdens on the day of the sabbaths, and do not go in by the gates of Ierousalem. ²²And do not carry burdens out of your houses on the day of the sabbaths, and you shall not do any work; keep the day of the sabbaths holy, as I commanded your fathers. ⁽²³⁾And they did not hear and did not incline their ear, ²³and they stiffened their neck more than their fathers so as not to hear me and not to receive instruction.

24 And it shall be if you hear me by hearing, says the Lord, so as not to bring in burdens through the gates of this city on the day of the sabbaths and to keep the day of the sabbaths holy so as not to do any work, ²⁵then there shall enter through the gates of this city kings and rulers sitting on the throne of Dauid, and mounted on chariots and horses, they and their rulers, men of Iouda and the inhabitants of Ierousalem, and this city shall be settled forever. ²⁶And they shall come from the cities of Iouda and all around Ierousalem and from the land of Beniamin and from the plain and from the mountain and from the southern land, bringing whole burnt offerings and sacrificial victims and manaa^a and frankincense, bringing praise into the house of the Lord. ²⁷And it shall be, if you do not listen to me, to keep the day of the sabbaths holy, so as not to carry in burdens and not to enter by the gates of Ierousalem on the day of the sabbaths, I will also kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the quarters of Ierousalem and shall not be quenched.

18 The word that came from the Lord to Ieremias, saying: ²“Get up, and go down to the potter’s house, and there you will hear my words.” ³And I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he was doing a job on the stones. ⁴And the vessel he was making failed in his hands, and again he made it into another vessel, as seemed good to him to do.

5 And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: ⁶Shall I not have the power to do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter did? Behold, you are in my hands like the clay of the potter. ⁷At last ^blet me^b speak with reference to a nation or with reference to a kingdom, to remove them and to destroy, ⁸and let that nation turn from all their evil, and I will change my mind about the evils that I devised to do to them. ⁹And at last ^blet me^b speak in reference to a nation and in reference to a kingdom to rebuild and to plant it, ¹⁰and let them do evil before me so as not to hear my voice, and I will change my mind about the good things that I had spoken to do to them. ¹¹And now, say to the men of Iouda and to the inhabitants of Ierousalem: Behold, I am shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Let each now turn from his evil way and make your doings more noble.

12 And they said, “We will play the man, because we will go after our own aversions, and each of us will do what pleases his evil heart!”

¹³ Therefore this is what the Lord says:

Do ask among nations:
Who has heard such horrible things

which Virgin Israel did exceedingly?

¹⁴ Surely, breasts^c will not fail from a rock,
or snow from the Lebanon?

Surely water violently carried by wind
will not change course?

¹⁵ Because my people forgot me,
they burned incense in vain,

and they will become weak in their ways,
to tread for miles^d on ancient paths,

since they have no road for travel,

¹⁶ to render their land an annihilation
and a thing to be hissed at forever.

All who pass through it will be
         astonished
and shake their head.

¹⁷ I will disperse them before their enemies
like a scorching wind.

I will show them a day of their ruin.

18 And they said, “Come, let us devise a scheme against Ieremias—because law shall not perish from a priest, and counsel from an intelligent person, and a word from a prophet. Come, and let us strike him with the tongue, and we will hear all his words.”

¹⁹ Listen to me, O Lord,
and listen to the sound of my
         vindication!

²⁰ Is evil a recompense for good
that together they spoke utterances
         against my soul
and hid their punishment for me?

Remember me when I stood before you
to speak good on their behalf,
to turn away your anger from them.

²¹ Therefore give their sons over to famine,
and gather them to a dagger’s power;

let their wives become childless and
         widows,

and let their men become destroyed by
death

and their youths become felled by dagger
in battle.

²² Let there be a cry in their houses!
You will bring marauders suddenly upon
         them,

because they undertook a plan for catching
         me
and hid snares for me!

²³ And you, O Lord, knew
all their plotting against me for death.

Do not excuse their injustices,
and do not blot out their sins from your
         sight.

Let their weakness be before you;
in a time of your anger deal with them.

19 Then the Lord said to me: Go, and acquire a fashioned earthenware jug, and you will bring some of the elders of the people and some of the priests, ²and you shall go out to the common burial ground of the sons of their children which is at the entry of the gate Charsith^a and read there all the words that I tell you. ³And you shall say: Hear a word of the Lord, O kings of Iouda and men of Iouda and inhabitants of Ierousalem and those who enter in these gates. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Behold, I am bringing evil upon this place so that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. ⁴Because they have forsaken me and have made this place foreign and offered incense in it to foreign gods whom they did not know, they nor their fathers, and the kings of Iouda have filled this place with innocent blood ⁵ and built high places of the goddess Baal to burn their sons with fire, which things I did not command nor intended in my heart. ⁶Therefore behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and this place will no longer be called Fall and Burial Ground of Hennom’s Son, but Burial Ground of Slaughter. ⁷And I will slaughter the plan of Iouda and the plan of Ierousalem in this place and will make them fall by dagger before their enemies and by the hands of people who seek their souls. And I will give their corpses for food to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth. ⁸And I will make this city into an annihilation and into a hissing; everyone who passes by it will look sullen and will hiss because of all its blow. ⁹And they shall eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and each shall eat the flesh of his fellow in the blockade and in the siege with which their enemies besiege them.

10 And you shall crush the jug in the sight of the men who go out with you ¹¹and shall say: This is what the Lord says: Thus will I crush this people and this city, as an earthen vessel is crushed, which can never be mended again. ¹²Thus will I do, says the Lord, to this place and to the inhabitants in it, that this city be rendered as the one falling to ruin. ¹³And the houses of Ierousalem and the houses of the kings of Iouda shall be like the ruinous place of unclean things in all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to the host of the sky and poured out libations to foreign gods.

14 And Ieremias came from the Fall, there 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: ¹⁵This is what the Lord says: Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon its villages all the evil that I have spoken against it, because they have stiffened their neck so as not to listen to my commandments.

20 And the priest Paschor son of Emmer—he was also appointed leader of the house of the Lord—heard Ieremias prophesying these words. ²And he struck him and put him into the sluice, which was by the gate of a house designated “the upper,” which was in the house of the Lord. ³And Paschor brought Ieremias out of the sluice, and Ieremias said to him, The Lord has called your name not Paschor, but Deportee, ⁴for this is what the Lord says: Behold, I am assigning you to deportation with all your friends, and they shall fall by their enemies’ dagger, and your eyes shall see it. And I will give you and all Iouda into the hands of the king of Babylon, and they shall deport them and shall cut them down with daggers. ⁵And I will give all the strength of this city and all its toils and all the treasures of the king of Iouda into the hands of his enemies, and they shall bring them into Babylon. ⁶And as for you and all who live in your house—you shall go in captivity, and in Babylon you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to them to whom you have prophesied lies.

⁷ O Lord, you have misled me,
and I was misled;

you got the upper hand
and prevailed;

I have become a laughingstock all day
         long;
I continued to be mocked,

⁸ because I will laugh with my bitter speech;
I will call upon faithlessness and
         wretchedness,

because the Lord’s word has become for me
a reproach and a derision my whole day.

⁹ And I said, “I will not name the name of the
         Lord
and will no longer speak in his name.”

And it became like a burning fire flaming in
         my bones,

and I became limp everywhere,
and I cannot bear up,

¹⁰ because I heard the blame of many gathered
         around,

“Band together, and let us band together
         against him,
all you men, his friends!

Watch his intent, whether he can be
         misled,
and we can prevail against him
and take our revenge on him.”

¹¹ And the Lord is with me like a strong
         warrior;
therefore they persecuted me
and were not able to consider.

They were greatly shamed,
because they did not consider their
         dishonor,
which will never be forgotten.

¹² O Lord, one who tests what is right,
one who understands kidneys^b and
         hearts,

may I see your avenging among them,
because to you I have revealed my
         defensive pleas.

¹³ Sing to the Lord; praise him,

because he has delivered the soul of the
         needy
from the hand of evildoers!

¹⁴ Cursed be the day
on which I was born on it!

The day on which my mother bore me—
let it not be longed for!

¹⁵ Cursed be the person
who brought the good news to my father,
         saying,

“A male child was born to you,”
being glad.

¹⁶ Let that person be like the cities
that the Lord overthrew in anger and did
         not repent;

let him hear a cry in the morning
and a shouting at noon,

¹⁷ because he did not kill me in the womb,
and my mother became my grave
and the womb one of perpetual
         conception.

¹⁸ Why is it that I came forth from the womb
to see toil and sorrow,

and my days continued in shame?

21 The word that came from the Lord to Ieremias, when King Sedekias sent to him Paschor son of Melchias and the priest Sophonias son of Maasaios, saying, ²Inquire of the Lord about us, because the king of Babylon has taken a stand against us, if the Lord will do according to all his wonderful deeds and he will withdraw from us.

3 And Ieremias said to them: Thus you shall say to Sedekias, king of Iouda: ⁴This is what the Lord says: Behold, I am turning back the weapons of war with which you are fighting with them, against the Chaldeans who have enclosed you outside the wall, into the midst of this city. ⁵And it is I who will fight you with outstretched hand and mighty arm, in anger and great wrath. ⁶And I will strike all the inhabitants in this city, human beings and animals, with great death, and they shall die. ⁷And afterwards, says the Lord, I will give Sedekias, king of Iouda, and his servants and the people left in this city from death and from famine and from the dagger into the hands of their enemies who are seeking their souls, and they shall cut them into pieces with a dagger’s edge; I will not be sparing toward them, and I will not have compassion on them.

8 And to this people you shall say: This is what the Lord says: Behold, I have given before you the way of life and the way of death. ⁹He who sits still in this city shall die by dagger and by famine, but he who goes out to side with the Chaldeans who have closed you in shall live and his soul shall be as booty, and he shall live, ¹⁰for I have set my face against this city for evil and not for good. It shall be given over into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

11 As for the house of the king of Iouda—hear a word of the Lord, ¹²O house of Dauid! This is what the Lord says:

Execute judgment in the morning,
and guide from the hand of him that
         wrongs him

anyone who has been seized

in order that my wrath may not be kindled
         like fire

and burn, and there will be no one to
quench it.

¹³ Behold, I am against you, the inhabitant of
         the valley of Sor,

the plain, against those who say,

“Who shall terrify us,

or who shall enter into our dwelling
place?”

¹⁴ I will kindle a fire in its^a forest,

and it shall devour all that is round about
         it^a.

22 This is what the Lord says: Go, and descend to the house of the king of Iouda, and you shall speak there this word, ²and you shall say: Hear a word of the Lord, O King of Iouda who sits on the throne of Dauid—you and your house and your people and those who enter by these gates. ³This is what the Lord says: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver one seized from the hand of one who does him wrong. And do not oppress, and do not act impiously against guest and orphan and widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, ⁴for if in doing you do this word, by the gates of this house shall also enter kings who sit on the throne of Dauid, and mounted on chariots and horses, they and their servants and their people. ⁵But if you will not do these words, by myself I have sworn, says the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation—⁶because this is what the Lord says against the house of the king of Iouda:

You are Galaad to me,
realm of Lebanon;

if I do not make you a wilderness,
cities not to be inhabited!

⁷ And I will bring destroyers against you,
a man and his ax,

and they shall cut down your choice
         cedars
and cast them into the fire.

8 And nations will pass through this city, and they will say, each to his fellow, “Why did the Lord deal in this way with this great city?” ⁹And they will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, their God, and did obeisance to foreign gods and were slaves to them.”

¹⁰ Do not weep for him who is dead,
nor bemoan him;

with weeping weep for the one who goes
         away,
because he shall return no more
nor see his native land—

11 for this is what the Lord says regarding Sellem son of Iosias, who was reigning in place of his father Iosias, who went away from this place: He shall return there no more, ¹²but in the place where I have deported him, there he shall die, and he shall never see this land again.

¹³ Ah, he who builds his house not with
         righteousness
and his upper rooms not with judgment,

he will work at his fellow’s for nothing,
and he will not pay him his wages.

¹⁴ You built for yourself a spacious house,
ventilated upper rooms fitted with
         windows

and paneled with cedar

and painted with vermilion.

¹⁵ Surely, you will not be king,
because you are irritated with Achaz your
         father?

They will not eat, and they will not drink;
it is better for you to execute judgment
and righteousness.

¹⁶ They did not know;
they did not judge the cause for the
         lowly

nor the cause of the needy.

Is not this so, because you do not know me?
                                               says the Lord.

¹⁷ Behold, are not your eyes and your heart
on nothing but your greed
and on innocent blood to shed it
and on wrongdoing
and on committing murder?

18 Therefore this is what the Lord says regarding King Ioakim son of Iosias of Iouda:

Woe to this man!

They shall not lament for him, “Ah,
brother!”

nor shall they weep for him, “Alas,
lord!”

¹⁹ With the burial of a donkey he shall be
         buried—

swept up, he will be thrown out beyond
the gate of Ierousalem.

²⁰ Go up to Lebanon, and cry out,
and give forth your voice in Basan,

and shout to the other side of the sea,
because all your lovers were crushed.

²¹ I spoke to you in your downfall,
and you said, “I will not listen.”

This has been your way from your youth;
you have not obeyed my voice.

²² A wind shall shepherd all your shepherds,
and your lovers shall go out in captivity,

because then you will be ashamed and
         disgraced
because of all who would kiss you.

²³ O inhabitant of Lebanon,
nesting among the cedars,

you will groan when pangs come upon
         you,
pains as of one giving birth!

24 I live, says the Lord, if King Iechonias son of Ioakim of Iouda ^ain being^a was a signet on my right hand, from there I would tear you off ²⁵and give you into the hands of people seeking your soul, before whose face you are afraid, into the hands of the Chaldeans. ²⁶And I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into a land, there where you were not born, and there you shall die. ²⁷But to the land for which they long with their souls, they shall not return.

²⁸ Iechonias was dishonored
like a vessel which is without its use,

which was hurled out,
and he was cast out into a land that he
         did not know.

²⁹ O land, land,
hear a word of the Lord!

³⁰ Record this man as a banished person,

because none of his offspring shall grow up
to sit on the throne of Dauid
as ruler again in Iouda.

23 Ah, the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of their pasture! ²Therefore this is what the Lord says regarding those who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my sheep and have driven them away, and you have not visited them. Behold, I punish you for your evil doings. ³And it is I who will receive those remaining of my people from every land, there where I have driven them, and I will restore them to their pasture, and they shall increase and multiply. ⁴And I will raise up shepherds for them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer or be terrified, says the Lord.

5 Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will raise up for Dauid a righteous dawn, and a king shall reign and shall understand and shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. ⁶In his days Iouda^b will be saved, and Israel will encamp in confidence. And this is the name by which he [the Lord] will call him: “Iosedek ⁽⁹⁾among the prophets.”

⁹ My heart was crushed;
within me all my bones shook;

I became like a crushed man
and like a person overcome by wine,

due to the Lord
and due to the dignity of his glory,

¹⁰ because due to these the land mourned,
the pastures of the wilderness were dried
         up.

And their course became evil,
and their strength not so,

¹¹ because priest and prophet were defiled,
and in my house I have seen their
         wickedness.

¹² Therefore let their way be to them
like slipperiness in thick darkness,
and they shall be tripped up and fall in
         it^c; for I will bring evil upon them
in the year of their visiting.

¹³ And in the prophets of Samaria
I saw lawless deeds:

they prophesied by the goddess Baal
and led my people Israel astray.

¹⁴ And in the prophets of Ierousalem
I have seen shocking things:

people committing adultery and walking in
         lies

and strengthening the hands of
evildoers

so that no one turns, each from his
wicked way;

all have become like Sodoma to me,
and its inhabitants just like Gomorra.

¹⁵ Therefore this is what the Lord says:

“Behold, I will feed them pain
and will give them bitter water to drink,

because from the prophets of Ierousalem
defilement went out to the whole land.”

16 Thus says the Lord Almighty: Do not hear the words of the prophets, because they are rendering a vision empty. They speak from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord. ¹⁷They say to those who reject the word of the Lord, “There shall be peace for you,” and to all who walk by their own will, [to every one who walks by the error of his own heart,] they said, “No evil shall come upon you”—

¹⁸ because who has stood in support of the
         Lord
and seen his word?
Who has given ear and obeyed?

¹⁹ Behold, an earthquake from the Lord,
and wrath goes forth as a ^aseismic
         upheaval^a;

when it^b gathers, it will come against the
impious.

²⁰ And the anger of the Lord will no longer
         turn back
until he has executed it^c
and until he accomplished it^c
due to the undertaking of his heart.

In the last of days they will understand
         them^c.

²¹ I was not sending the prophets,
and they themselves kept running;

I did not speak to them,
and they themselves kept prophesying.

²² And if they had stood in support of me
and if they had heard my words,

they would also have turned them, my
         people,
from their evil doings.

23 I am a god nearby, says the Lord, and not a god far off. ²⁴If someone shall be hidden in secret places, is it not I that shall also see him? Do I not fill the sky and the earth? says the Lord. ²⁵I have heard what the prophets are saying who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed a dream!” ²⁶How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy, when in fact they prophesy the will of their own heart, ²⁷those who plan to forget my name by their dreams which they tell, each to his fellow, just as their fathers forgot my name by the goddess Baal? ²⁸Let the prophet in whom there is the dream tell his dream, and let him in whom my word is to him tell my word in truth. What is the chaff to the grain? ²⁹Are not my words just like fire and like an ax that cuts a rock? ³⁰Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord God, who steal my words each from his fellow. ³¹Behold, I am against the prophets who receive prophecies of tongue and slumber their slumber. ³²Behold, I am against the prophets who were prophesying lying dreams, and they kept telling them, and they led my people astray by their lies and by their errors, and it was not I that sent them, and I did not command them, and they will not profit this people with profit.

33 And if this people or a priest or a prophet asks you, “What is the issue of the Lord?” you shall then say to them, “You are the issue, and I will strike you, says the Lord.” ³⁴And as for the prophet and the priest and the people who might say, “Issue of the Lord,” I will also punish that person and his household. ³⁵Thus shall you say, each to his fellow and each to his brother, “What has the Lord answered?” and “What has the Lord spoken?” ³⁶And “Issue of the Lord,” do not name it any more, because “the issue” will be the word belonging to the person. ³⁷And what has the Lord, our God, spoken? ³⁸Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: Because you have said this phrase, “Issue of the Lord,” and I sent to you, saying, You shall not say, “Issue of the Lord,” ³⁹therefore, behold, I am taking you and striking you and the city that I gave to you and your fathers. ⁴⁰And I will render upon you everlasting disgrace and everlasting dishonor which shall not be forgotten.

7 Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and they shall no longer say, “The Lord lives who brought the house of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” ⁸but “The Lord lives who gathered all the offspring of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries, there where he had driven them, and restored them to their land.”

24 The Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed before the shrine of the Lord, after King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon had taken into exile from Ierousalem King Iechonias son of Ioakim of Iouda and the rulers and the artisans and the prisoners and the wealthy and had brought them to Babylon. ²The one basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten because of their badness. ³And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Ieremias?” And I said, “Figs, the good ones very good and the bad ones very bad, which will not be eaten because of their badness.”

⁴ And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: ⁵This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Like these good figs, so I will regard those exiled from Iouda, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans, for good. ⁶And I will fix my eyes upon them for good, and I will restore them to this land. And I will rebuild them and never tear down, and I will plant them and never pluck up. ⁷And I will give them a heart that they may know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall become a people to me, and I will become a god to them, because they shall return to me with their whole heart.

8 And as the bad figs which will not be eaten because of their badness—this is what the Lord says: So will I hand over King Sedekias of Iouda and his nobles and the remnant of Ierousalem, those left in this land and those who live in Egypt. ⁹ And I will give them as a scattering to all the kingdoms of the earth and as a disgrace and as an illustration and as a thing to be hated and as a curse in every place, there where I drove them. ¹⁰And I will send to them the famine and the death and the dagger until they cease from the land that I gave to them.

25 The word that came to Ieremias regarding all the people of Iouda, in the fourth year of King Ioakim son of Iosias of Iouda, ²which he spoke to all the people of Iouda and to the inhabitants of Ierousalem, saying: ³In the thirteenth year of King Iosias son of Amos of Iouda, and until this day for twenty-three years, and I spoke to you, being early and speaking, ⁴and I would send to you my slaves the prophets, sending them at dawn, but you have not listened and have not paid heed to your ears ⁵when I was saying, “Do^a turn, everyone from his evil way and from your evil doings, and dwell upon the land that I have given to you and your fathers from of old and forever; ⁶do not go after foreign gods to be slaves to them and to do obeisance to them in order that you may not provoke me to anger with the works of your hands so as to do you harm.” ⁷And you did not hear me.

8 Therefore this is what the Lord says: Because you have not believed my words, ⁹behold, I am sending for and I will take a paternal family from the north, and I will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all nations around it, and I will utterly devastate them and render them into an annihilation and into a hissing and into an everlasting disgrace. ¹⁰And I will banish from them a sound of mirth and a sound of gladness, a voice of bridegroom and a voice of bride, a fragrance of perfume and light of a lamp. ¹¹And the whole land shall become an annihilation, and they shall be slaves amongst the nations seventy years. ¹²And when seventy years are completed, I will punish that nation, and I will make them an everlasting waste. ¹³And I will bring upon that land all my words that I have spoken against it, everything written in this book.

14(49.34) What Ieremias prophesied against the nations of Ailam.

15(35) This is what the Lord says: Let the bow of Ailam be crushed, mainstay of their dominance. ¹⁶⁽³⁶⁾And I will bring upon Ailam four winds from the four quarters of the sky, and I will scatter them in all these winds, and there shall not be a nation to which it shall not come there—those driven from Ailam. ¹⁷⁽³⁷⁾And I will terrify them before their enemies who seek their soul, and I will bring evil upon them, the wrath of my anger. And I will send my dagger after them until I have consumed them. ¹⁸⁽³⁸⁾And I will set my throne in Ailam and send out from there king and nobles.

19(39) And it shall be in the last of days I will return the captivity of Ailam, says the Lord.

26 ^(46.1)In the beginning when King Sedekias reigned, this word came concerning Ailam. ² For Egypt, regarding the force of Pharao Nechao, king of Egypt, who was by the river Euphrates at Charchamis, whom King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon struck in the fourth year of King Ioakim of Iouda:

³ Take up weapons and shields,
and advance for battle!

⁴ Saddle the horses;
mount up, you horsemen!

And take your stations with your helmets;
throw your lances,
and put on your breastplates!

⁵ Why is it that they are terrified
and they fall back?—

for their strong shall be beaten down.
They have fled in flight

and did not turn back, being encircled all
         around!
                                             says the Lord.

⁶ Let not the swift flee away,
and let not the strong one escape;

to the north, the regions by the Euphrates
         were powerless;
they have fallen.

⁷ Who is this that will rise up like a river,
and like rivers surge with water?

⁸ Waters of Egypt will rise up like a river,

and it^b said, I will rise up and cover land
and destroy inhabitants in it.

⁹ Mount on the horses;
prepare the chariots!

Go forth, O warriors of the Ethiopians
and Libyans armed with weapons,
and grasp, O Lydians; draw the bow.

¹⁰ And that day belongs to the Lord, our
         God,

a day of vengeance,

to take vengeance on his enemies.

And a dagger of the Lord shall devour and
         be sated

and be drunk with their blood,

because there^a is a sacrifice for the Lord
from the land of the north by the river
         Euphrates.

¹¹ Go up, O Galaad, and take pine resin
to the virgin daughter of Egypt!

In vain you have multiplied your
         medicines;

there is no help for you.

¹² Nations have heard your voice,
and the earth was filled with your cry,

because warrior was weak against warrior;
both have fallen together.

13 What the Lord spoke by the hand of Ieremias that the king of Babylon would come to smite the land of Egypt:

¹⁴ Declare in Magdolos, and proclaim in
         Memphis;

Say, “Set up, and be ready,
because a dagger devoured your yew^b.”

¹⁵ Why has Apis fled?
Your [choice] bull calf did not remain,
         because the Lord paralyzed him.

¹⁶ And your multitude was weak and fell,
and each kept saying to his fellow,

“Let us rise up and return to our own
         people

and to our fatherland,

because of the Greek dagger.”

¹⁷ Call the name of Pharao Nechao, king of
         Egypt,

Saon-esbi-emoed^c.

¹⁸ I live, says the Lord God,

because he^d shall come
like Itabyrion^e among the mountains
and like Carmel by the sea.

¹⁹ Make for yourself implements for going into
         exile,

resident daughter of Egypt,

because Memphis shall become an
         annihilation,

and it shall be burned, because there are
no inhabitants in it.

²⁰ A beautified heifer is Egypt—
a fragment from the north came upon
         her.

²¹ And her mercenaries in her
are like grain-fed calves,

for they too have turned and fled together;
they did not stand,

because a day of ruin has come upon them,
and a time for their punishment.

²² A sound like of a hissing snake,
because they will travel in sand,

and they will come against her with axes,
like people felling trees.

²³ They shall cut down her forest,
                                                says the Lord,

because there shall be nothing like it^f,

because it^f is more numerous than
         grasshoppers,
and they are without number.

²⁴ The daughter of Egypt was put to shame;
she was handed over into the hands of a
         people from the north.

²⁵ Behold, I am avenging Amon, her son,
on Pharao and on those who trust in
         him.

²⁷ But as for you, have no fear, my slave
         Iakob,
nor be terrified, O Israel;

for behold, I am saving you from far away
and your offspring from the land of their
         captivity.

And Iakob shall return and have quiet and
         sleep,

and there shall be no one to cause him
difficulty.

²⁸ Have no fear, my servant Iakob,
                                                says the Lord,

because I am with you,

because I will make an end among every
         nation,

among people to whom I have banished
you there,

but I will not make you to fail!

And I will discipline you in just measure,
and when I deem innocent, I will not
         deem you innocent.

27 ^(50.1)A word of the Lord, which he spoke regarding Babylon.

² Declare among the nations, and make
         heard,

and do not conceal; say:

Babylon has been taken;
[Bel] the undaunted was put to shame;
the gentle [Marodach was undone],

3 because from the north a nation has come up against her; he shall make her land an annihilation, and there shall be no one to live in it, from human being even to animal.

4 In those days and in that time the sons of Israel shall come, they and the sons of Iouda together; they shall come walking and weeping as they seek the Lord, their God. ⁵They shall ask the way to Sion, for here they will set their face, and they shall come and flee for refuge to the Lord God, for an everlasting covenant will not be forgotten.

6 My people have become lost sheep; their shepherds expelled them; they have misled them to the mountains; from mountain to hill they went; they have forgotten their fold. ⁷All who would find them would devour them; their enemies said, “Let us not release them, because they have sinned against the Lord. A pasture of righteousness ^athey are^a for the one who gathered their fathers.”

8 Become a stranger from the midst of Babylon and from the land of the Chaldeans, and go out, and become like dragons before sheep, ⁹because behold, I am stirring up against Babylon gatherings of nations from the land of the north, and they shall array themselves against her; from there she shall be taken, as an arrow of a skilled warrior will not return empty. ¹⁰Chaldea shall be for plunder; all who plunder her shall be sated—

¹¹ because you were rejoicing and boasting
while plundering my heritage;

for you were frisking about like heifers in
         pasture,

and you were butting horns like bulls;

¹² your mother was utterly shamed,
a mother for good, last^b of nations, a
         wilderness.

¹³ Because of the wrath of the Lord she shall
         not be inhabited,

and all of her shall become an
         annihilation,

and everyone who passes through Babylon
         shall be sullen

and whistle because of her every wound.

¹⁴ Take up your positions against Babylon
         round about,

all you that bend a bow;

shoot at her; do not be sparing with your
         arrows.

¹⁵ And applaud exceedingly over her:
“Her hands were paralyzed;

her bulwarks have fallen,
and her wall was razed.”

Because vengeance is from God,
take vengeance on her;
do to her as she has done.

¹⁶ Utterly destroy seed from Babylon,
and the wielder of the sickle in time of
         harvest;

because of the Greek dagger,
each of them shall return to his own
         people,

and each of them shall flee to his own
land.

17 Israel is a wandering sheep; lions drove him away. The first one, king of Assour, devoured him, and this later one, king of Babylon, his bones. ¹⁸Therefore, this is what the Lord says: Behold, I am taking vengeance on the king of Babylon and on his land, as I took vengeance on the king of As-sour. ¹⁹And I will restore Israel to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and on Mount Ephraim and in Galaad, and his soul shall be satisfied. ²⁰In those days and at that time they will seek the injustice of Israel, and there shall be none, and the sins of Iouda, also they shall not be found, because I will be merciful to those that have remained in the land, says the Lord.

²¹ Go up bitterly against her
and against the inhabitants in her;

take vengeance, O dagger, and annihilate,
                                               says the Lord,

and act according to all that I am
commanding you.

²² A noise of battle and great destruction
is in the land of the Chaldeans!

²³ How was the hammer of the whole earth
broken and shattered!

How has Babylon turned into
an annihilation among nations!

²⁴ They will attack you, and you will be taken,
         O Babylon,

and you will not know it;

you were discovered and seized,
because you withstood the Lord.

²⁵ The Lord has opened his store room
and brought out the implements of his
         wrath,

because there is a task for the Lord God
in the land of the Chaldeans.

²⁶ For her times have come.
Open her storehouses;

search her like a cave, and destroy her
         utterly;

let there be no remnant of her.

²⁷ Dry up all her fruit,
and let them go down to slaughter.

Woe to them, because their day has come
and the time of their punishment!

28 A sound of people fleeing and escaping from the land of Babylon to declare in Sion the vengeance of the Lord, our God.

29 Summon many against Babylon, every one who bends a bow. Make a camp against her, all around; let there be no one to escape. Repay her according to her deeds; just as she has done, do to her—because she withstood the Lord, holy God of Israel. ³⁰Therefore her young men shall fall in her squares, and all her fighting men shall be thrown down, said the Lord.

³¹ Behold, I am against you the arrogant one,
                                                says the Lord,

because your day has come
and the time of your punishment.

³² And your arrogance shall become weak and
         fall,
and there shall not be one to raise it up,

and I will kindle a fire in her^c forest,
and it will devour everything around
         her^c.

33 This is what the Lord says: The sons of Israel have been oppressed, and so too the sons of

Iouda; all their captors have oppressed them, because they were unwilling to send them off. ³⁴And he that redeems them is strong; the Lord Almighty is his name. He will judge with judgment against his adversaries, that he may destroy the earth, and for those that inhabit Babylon he will incite

35 a dagger against the Chaldeans
and against the inhabitants of Babylon
and against her nobles
and against her sages,

36 a dagger against her warriors—
and they shall be paralyzed—

a dagger against their horses
and against their chariots,

37 a dagger against their warriors
and against the mixed populace in her
         midst—

and they shall become like women—

a dagger against her treasures—
and they shall be scattered ³⁸by her
         water,

and they shall be disgraced,
because it is a land of carved images,
and in the islands they were boasting.

39 Therefore phantoms shall live in the islands, and daughters of Sirens shall inhabit her; she shall never again be inhabited forever. ⁴⁰As when God overturned Sodoma and Gomorra and those adjacent to them, said the Lord, no person shall live there, and no son of man shall sojourn there.

⁴¹ Behold, a people is coming from the
         north,

and a great nation and many kings

shall be stirred from the farthest part of
         the earth,

⁴² wielding bow and hand knife;
it^a is reckless and will show no mercy.

The noise of them shall sound like the sea;
they will ride upon horses,

equipped, like a fire for battle
against you, O daughter Babylon!

⁴³ The king of Babylon heard news of them,
and his hands became paralyzed;

affliction tightly seized him,
pains like those of one giving birth.

44 Behold, just like a lion it^b will come up from the Jordan into Aithan—because I will quickly pursue them away from her^c, and I will set every young man against her. For who is like me? And who will withstand me? And who is this shepherd who will stand against me? ⁴⁵Therefore, hear the plan of the Lord, which he has planned against Babylon, and his purposes that he has formed against the inhabiting Chaldeans: If the lambs of the sheep be not killed, if their pasture be not annihilated from them …—⁴⁶because at the sound of the capture of Babylon the earth shall tremble, and her cry shall be heard among nations.

28 ^(51.1)This is what the Lord says:

Behold, I am stirring up a destructive
scorching wind

against Babylon

and against the inhabiting Chaldeans,

² and I will send insolent men to Babylon,
and they shall treat her with insolence
and shall maltreat her land.

Woe to Babylon on every side
on the day of her trouble.

³ Let him that bends his bow bend it,
and let him who has his armor put it on.

Do not be sparing toward her young men,
and annihilate her entire force.

⁴ And they shall fall down slain in the land of
         the Chaldeans
and be pierced outside of her,

⁵ for Israel and Iouda^d did not become
         widowed
from their God,
from the Lord Almighty,

because their land is full of injustice
against the holy things of Israel!

⁶ Flee from the midst of Babylon,
and save your souls, each of you!

And do not be cast aside in her injustice,
because it is a time of vengeance on her
         from the Lord;

he is repaying repayment to her.

⁷ Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord’s hand,
making all the earth drunken;

nations drank of her wine;
therefore they were shaken.

⁸ And suddenly Babylon fell and was
         shattered;
wail for her!

Bring pine resin for her ruin,
if perhaps she shall be healed.

⁹ We treated Babylon,
but she was not healed.

Let us forsake her, and let each of us go
         away
to his own country,

because her judgment has reached skyward;
it rose up even to the stars.

¹⁰ The Lord has brought forth his judgment;
come, and let us declare in Sion
the works of the Lord, our God.

¹¹ Equip the arrows!
Fill the quivers!

The Lord has stirred up the spirit of the king of the Medes, because his wrath is against Babylon to destroy it utterly, because it is vengeance from the Lord, vengeance for his shrine.

¹² Raise a standard on the walls of Babylon;
set up quivers;

awaken the watch;
prepare weapons;

because he has taken in hand and the Lord
         will do what he spoke against the inhabitants of
Babylon,

¹³ though she encamps by abundant waters
and by the multitude of her treasures—

your end has truly come
into your inwards,

¹⁴ because the Lord has sworn by his arm:

For I will fill you with people like
         grasshoppers,

and those that come down shall utter a
sound against you.

¹⁵ When he was making the earth by his
         strength,

when he was preparing the world by his
wisdom,

by his understanding he stretched out the
         sky;

¹⁶ he made the sound of water a voice in the
         sky,

and he brought up clouds from the end
of the earth.

Lightnings he made into rain
and brought out light from his store
         rooms.

¹⁷ Every person became vain, ^aapart from^a
         knowledge;

every goldsmith was put to shame by his
carved images;

because they^b cast lies,
there is no breath in them.

¹⁸ Worthless they are, works to be ridiculed;
at the time of their visiting they shall
         perish.

¹⁹ Such a portion is not Iakob’s,
because he who formed all things,

he is his inheritance;
the Lord is his name.

²⁰ It is you who scatter for me implements of
         war,

and in you I will scatter nations,
and from^c you I will destroy kings,

²¹ and in you I will scatter a horse and its rider,

^22(21b) and in you I will scatter chariots and their
         charioteers,

and in you I will scatter young man and girl,
and in you I will scatter man and woman,

²³ and in you I will scatter a shepherd and his
         flock,

and in you I will scatter a farmer and his
husbandry,

and in you I will scatter leaders and
         generals.

24 And I will repay to Babylon and all the inhabiting Chaldeans all their wrongs that they have done against Sion before your very eyes, says the Lord.

²⁵ Behold, I am against you, the corrupted
         mountain
that corrupts the whole earth,

and I will stretch out my hand against you
and roll you down from the rocks
and render you like a burned-out
         mountain.

²⁶ And they shall take no stone from you for a
         corner
and no stone for a foundation,

because you shall be an annihilation
         forever,
                                             says the Lord.

²⁷ Raise a standard on the land;
trumpet with a trumpet among nations;

consecrate nations against her,
summon against her kingdoms of Araret,
from me also the Aschanazeans;

set up siege engines against her;
mount up against her cavalry like a
         multitude of grasshoppers.

²⁸ Consecrate nations against her,
the king of the Medes and of the whole
         earth,

his leading men and all his generals.

²⁹ The land shook and toiled,
for the Lord’s purpose against Babylon
         stood,

to make the land of Babylon an
         annihilation

and that she would not be inhabited.

³⁰ Babylon’s warrior gave up fighting;
they will sit there under siege;

their dominance was broken;
they became like women;

her quarters were set on fire;
her bars were crushed.

³¹ A pursuer will pursue to meet a pursuer,
and a reporter

to meet a reporter, to report to the king of Babylon
that his city has been taken:

³² at the end of his fords they were seized,
and their communities were burnt with
         fire,

and his fighting men are coming out,

³³ for this is what the Lord says:

Houses of the king of Babylon will be
         threshed

like a threshing floor in season;

yet a little while
and her harvest time will come.

³⁴ “King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon has
         devoured me;
he has apportioned me;

he has seized me, a slim vessel;
he has swallowed me like a dragon;

he has filled his belly with my delicacies.

35 My hardships and my miseries drove me
         into Babylon,”
resident Sion shall say.

“And my blood be^d on the residing
         Chaldeans,”

Ierousalem shall say.

36 Therefore this is what the Lord says:

Behold, I am judging your adversary
and will take vengeance for you.

And I will make desolate her sea
and make her fountain dry,

37 and Babylon shall become an annihilation
and shall not be inhabited.

38 As well, like lions they were aroused,
and like lions’ whelps.

39 When they are hot I will give them drink
and make them drunk in order that they
         be stupefied

and sleep a perpetual sleep and never
wake,
                                     says the Lord.

⁴⁰ I will bring them down like lambs to
         slaughter
and like rams with kids.

⁴¹ How she was taken,
and the boast of the whole earth taken
         prey!

How Babylon has become
an annihilation among the nations!

⁴² The sea has come up to Babylon
by the sound of its waves,

and she has been covered up.

⁴³ Her cities have become
a waterless land and untrodden;

no one will live in her,
nor will a son of man lodge in her.

⁴⁴ I will take vengeance on Babylon
and bring out from her mouth what she
         has swallowed.

And the nations shall no longer gather to
         her.

⁴⁹ And in Babylon slain of all the earth will
         fall.

⁵⁰ Since you are survivors of the land,
go, and do not stop!

You afar off, remember the Lord,
and let Ierousalem come up into your
         heart:

⁵¹ We were put to shame, because we have
         heard our insult;
dishonor has covered our face;

aliens have entered into our holy places,
into the Lord’s house.

⁵² Therefore behold, days are coming, says the
         Lord,

and I will take vengeance on her carved
images,

and in all her land wounded shall fall,

⁵³ because, if Babylon should mount up like
         the sky,

and because, if she should fortify the
height of her strength,

from me those who destroy utterly will
come upon her,
                                             says the Lord.

⁵⁴ A sound of a cry in Babylon!

And a great crashing in the land of the
         Chaldeans,

⁵⁵ because the Lord utterly destroyed Babylon
and ruined her great voice roaring like
         many waters;

he gave her voice to destruction,

⁵⁶ because distress has come against Babylon;

her warriors were taken;
their bow has been terrified,

for a god is repaying them.

⁵⁷ The Lord repays repayment to her,

⁽⁵⁷⁾ and he will make drunk with drunkenness
her leaders and her sages and her
         generals,

says the King; Lord Almighty is his name.

⁵⁸ This is what the Lord says:

Babylon’s wall was made broad;
in being leveled it shall be leveled,

and her high gates
shall be set on fire.

And peoples will not exhaust themselves for
         nothing,

and nations shall fail in rule.

59 The word that the Lord commanded Ieremias the prophet to speak to Saraias son of Nerias son of Maasaias, when he was going with King Sedekias of Iouda to Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign. And Saraias was ruler of gifts. ⁶⁰And Ieremias wrote in one book all the evils that would come on Babylon, all these words that have been written regarding Babylon. ⁶¹And Ieremias said to Saraias: “When you come to Babylon, also see and read all these words, ⁶²and you will say, ‘O Lord, O Lord, it was you who spoke against this place to destroy it utterly and so that neither human nor animal inhabitants be in it, because it shall be an annihilation forever.’ ⁶³And it shall be when you finish reading this book, you will then tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates, ⁶⁴ and you will say, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, and it shall rise up no more before the Chaldeans whom I am bringing on her.’ “

29 ^(47.1)Regarding the allophyles.

⁽²⁾ This is what the Lord says:

² Behold, waters are rising from the north
and shall become a wadi overflowing

and shall overflow a land and all that fills it,
a city and those who live in it.

And humans shall cry out,
and all the inhabitants of the land shall
         shout.

³ At the noise of his onslaught, at the hoofs of
         his horses

and at the commotion of his chariots, the
noise of his wheels,

fathers did not turn back for their sons,
because of the feebleness of their hands,

⁴ in the day that is coming
to destroy all the allophyles, and I will annihilate Tyre and Sidon
and all those that remain for their help,

because the Lord will utterly destroy
those remaining in the islands.

⁵ Baldness has come upon Gaza;
Ascalon was cast away,

and the remaining Enakim.

⁶ How long will you cut, you dagger of the
         Lord?

How long until you will be quiet?

Restore yourself to your scabbard;
rest, and be lifted up!

⁷ How shall it be quiet?
And the Lord has ordered it^a

against Ascalon and against the seashores,
against those remaining,

that it^a be aroused.

^8(49.7) For Idumea.

This is what the Lord says:

There is no longer wisdom in Thaiman;
counsel has perished from the prudent;
their wisdom is vanishing;

⁹⁽⁸⁾     their face was misled.

Sink deep into sitting,
you that live in Dedan,

because he did difficult things.

I brought them^b upon him at the time
when I visited upon him,

¹⁰⁽⁹⁾ because grape gatherers came,
who shall not leave for you things
         gleaned.

As thieves by night they shall place their
         hand.

¹¹⁽¹⁰⁾ Because I have ravaged Esau,
I have uncovered their hiding places;

they will not be able to hide;

his brother’s and his neighbor’s rewards
         perished,

and it is not possible ¹²⁽¹¹⁾for your orphan
to be left in order to live,

and widows trust in me—

13(12) because this is what the Lord says: They who were not accustomed to drink the cup drank, and you, though being deemed innocent, shall not be declared innocent, ¹⁴⁽¹³⁾because by myself I have sworn, says the Lord, that you shall become, in her^c midst, untrodden and an object of reproach and of cursing and all her towns shall be desolate forever.

¹⁵⁽¹⁴⁾ I have heard a tiding from the Lord,
and he sent messengers to nations:

“Gather yourselves together and come
         against her^d;

rise up for battle!”

¹⁶⁽¹⁵⁾ I rendered you small among nations,
despised among humankind.

¹⁷⁽¹⁶⁾ Your sporting laid hands on you;

recklessness of your heart broke up holes in
         rocks;

it seized strength of a high hill.

Because like an eagle he set his nest high,
from there I will bring you down.

18(17) Idumea shall become untrodden; everyone who passes by will hiss at her. ¹⁹⁽¹⁸⁾Just as Sodoma was overthrown, and Gomorra and her resident-alien towns, said the Lord Almighty, no person shall ever set down there, and no son of man shall dwell there. ²⁰⁽¹⁹⁾Behold, just like a lion it^e will come up from the midst of the Jordan to a place of Aithan—because I will quickly pursue them away from her^c. Appoint over her^c the young men—because who is like me? And who can withstand me? And who is this shepherd who will stand against me? ²¹⁽²⁰⁾Therefore, hear the Lord’s plan, which he planned against Idumea, and his purpose, which he purposed against the inhabitants of Thaiman: If the least of the sheep be not swept away, if their lodging be not made untrodden to her!—²²⁽²¹⁾because at the sound of their fall the earth feared, and a cry was heard at the sea of Souph. ²³⁽²²⁾Behold, just like an eagle, he will see and extend the wings over her strongholds! And the heart of the strong of Idumea in that day shall be like the heart of a woman in labor.

30 ^(49.1) For the sons of Ammon.

Thus did the Lord say:

Surely, there are no sons in Israel,
or have they none to succeed^f?

Why did Melchol take Galaad,
and shall their people settle in their
         towns?

² Therefore behold, days are coming,
                                             quoth the Lord,

I will make heard the tumult of battles
         against Rabbath;

they shall become untrodden and a
         destruction,

and her altars^g shall be burned down
with fire,

and Israel shall succeed^f his rule.

³ Shout, O Hesebon, because Gai perished!
Cry out, O daughters of Rabbath!

Put on sackcloth,
and lament,

because Melchol shall go in exile,
his priests and his rulers together.

⁴ Why will you rejoice in the plains,

O daughter of disgrace
who trusted in her treasures, who said,
“Who will enter against me?”

⁵ Behold, I am bringing fear upon you,
                                               said the Lord,

from all your surrounding area,
and you will be scattered,

each headlong, and there shall be no one to
         gather.

6(28) For Kedar, the queen of the court, whom King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon struck.

Thus did the Lord say:

Rise up, and advance against Kedar,
and strike the sons of Kedem!

⁷⁽²⁹⁾ They shall take their tents and their sheep;
their clothes and all their implements

and their camels they shall take for
         themselves.

And summon destruction against them all
         around!

⁸⁽³⁰⁾ Flee very much; sink deep into sitting,
you seated in the court,

because the king of Babylon
has planned a plan against you
and formed a purpose against you.

⁹⁽³¹⁾ Rise up, and advance against a nation at
         ease,

that sits in respite;

they have no doors, no bolt pins; [no bars]
they lodge alone.

¹⁰⁽³²⁾And their camels shall become plunder,
and the multitude of their cattle,
         destruction.

And with every wind I will winnow them,
when they have been sheared before
         them.

I will bring their rout from their every side,
                                             said the Lord.

¹¹⁽³³⁾And the court shall become a haunt of
         sparrows

and untrodden forever;

no person shall ever sit down there,
and no son of an earthborn shall settle
         there.

¹²⁽²³⁾For Damascus.

Hemath and Arphad were put to shame,
because they have heard bad tidings;

they were astonished; they were angered;
they will not be able to rest.

¹³⁽²⁴⁾Damascus has become undone; she turned
         to flight;
trembling seized her.

¹⁴⁽²⁵⁾How did she not forsake a praiseworthy city,
a village which I loved?

¹⁵⁽²⁶⁾Therefore young men shall fall in your
         squares,

and all your warrior men shall fall,
                                    quoth the Lord.

¹⁶⁽²⁷⁾And I will burn a fire at Damascus’ wall,
and it shall devour the quarters of the
         son of Hader.

31 ^(48.1)For Moab.

Thus did the Lord say:

Woe for Nabau, because he^a perished!
Kariathaim was taken;

Hamasagab was put to shame, and Hatath.

²     Healing of Moab is no more;

in Hesebon they planned evil against her:

“We cut her off from being a nation!”

She shall stop with a stop;
a dagger shall go after you,

³ because a voice of people that cry from
         Horonaim,
“Desolation and a great fracture!”

⁴ “Moab was crushed!” announce to Zogora.

⁵ Because Halaoth was filled by weeping,
he will go up weeping by way of
         Horonaim;

a cry of fracture you have heard.

⁶ Flee, and save your souls,
and you shall be like a wild ass in a
         wilderness!

⁷ Seeing that you trusted in your strongholds,
you also shall be seized.

And Chamos shall go out in exile,
his priests and his rulers together.

⁸ And destruction shall come upon every
         city;

it shall not be saved.

And the valley shall perish,
and the plain shall be destroyed utterly,
as the Lord has said.

⁹ Give signs to Moab,
because she will be kindled with
         kindling,

and all her cities shall become untrodden;
from where will she get an inhabitant?

10 Accursed is the one who is doing the work of the Lord carelessly by keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.

¹¹ Moab was at rest from childhood
and trusted in his glory;

he did not pour from vessel to vessel,
and he was not going into exile;

therefore his flavor remained in him, and
         his aroma did not leave.

¹² Therefore behold, days are coming, quoth the Lord, and I shall send to him people that deviate, and they will make him deviate, and they shall pulverize his vessels and break up his mixtures. ¹³And Moab shall be ashamed of Chamos, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Baithel, when they had confidence in them.

¹⁴ How will you say, “We are strong
and a strong person in warfare”?

¹⁵ Moab perished;
his city and his choice young men went
         down to slaughter.

¹⁶ Moab’s day is near to come,
and his wickedness, very swiftly.

¹⁷ Stir for him, all you round about him
and all who know his name;

say, “How has a renowned staff broken to
         pieces,

a rod of magnificence!”

¹⁸ Come down from glory,
and sit on moist ground;
seated she is being destroyed,
because Moab has perished;

he that ruins your stronghold came up
         against you.

¹⁹ Stand by the road, and watch,
you^a that sit in Aroer!

And ask him that flees and escapes,
and say, “What has happened?”

²⁰ Moab was put to shame, because he was
         broken to pieces;
wail, and cry!

Tell it in Arnon
that Moab has perished.

21 And judgment is coming to the land of Misor, upon Chelon and upon Rephas and upon Mophaath ²²and upon Daibon and upon Nabau and upon the house of Deblathaim ²³and upon Kariathaim and upon the house of Gamol and upon the house of Maon ²⁴and upon Karioth and upon Bosor and upon all the cities of Moab, those far and those near. ²⁵Moab’s horn was cut off, and his effort was crushed.

26 Make him drunk, because he was magnified against the Lord, and Moab shall clap with his hand, and he too shall become a laughingstock. ²⁷And if not, was Israel a jest for you? If he was found among your thefts, ^bis it^b because you kept fighting him?

²⁸ The inhabitants of Moab left the cities
and lived among rocks;

they became like doves that nest among rocks
at the mouth of a gorge.

²⁹ I heard of Moab’s insolence;
he was very insolent in his insolence and
         his arrogance.

And his heart was lifted up.

³⁰ But I knew his works.
It was not enough for him;
he did not do thus.

³¹ Therefore wail for Moab on all sides;
shout to the men of Kir Hadas, of
         drought.

³² As with the weeping for Iazer I will weep for
         you,

O vine of Sebema!

Your branches crossed over the sea;
cities reached Iazer;

upon your summer fruit, upon your grape
         gatherers
destruction has fallen.

³³ Joy and gladness were swept away
from the land of Moabitis,

and wine was in your vats;
they did not tread in the early morning;
“aided”^c “aided”^c, [they did] not “aided”^c

34 From a cry of Hesebon as far as Eleale, their cities gave forth their voice, from Zogor as far as Horonaim and Agela Salasia, because even the water of Nebrim shall become something burnt. ³⁵And I will destroy Moab, quoth the Lord, since he ascends upon an altar^d and offers incense to his gods. ³⁶Therefore my heart will ^erumble^b for Moab^e as pipes will rumble; my heart will rumble like a pipe for the people of Kir Hadas. Therefore, what one gained perished [from a person].

37 They will have every head in every place shaved, and every beard shall be shaved, and all hands shall beat, and sackcloth on every loin, ³⁸even on all the housetops of Moab and in her squares, because I have crushed her, quoth the Lord, like a container for which no one has any use. ³⁹How Hatat shouted! How Moab turned her back! Moab was ashamed and became a laughingstock and an object of indignation to all those about her—

⁴⁰ because thus did the Lord say:

⁴¹ Hakkarioth was seized,
and the strongholds were also seized.

⁴² And Moab shall be destroyed from being a
         crowd,

because he was magnified against the
Lord.

⁴³ Trap and fear and pit are upon you,
you seated one of Moab!

⁴⁴ He who flees from before fear
shall fall into the pit,

and he who climbs out of the pit
shall be caught in the trap,

because I will bring these things upon Moab
in the year of their visiting.

32 ^(25.15)Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say: Take from my hand the cup of this unmixed wine, and you shall make all the nations, to them to whom I send you, drink, ²⁽¹⁶⁾and they are vomiting and will go out of their minds before the dagger that I am sending among them.

3(17) And I took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made the nations, to whom the Lord sent me to them, drink: ⁴⁽¹⁸⁾Ierousalem and the cities of Iouda and its kings and its rulers, to make them a desolation and something untrodden and a hissing ⁵⁽¹⁹⁾and Pharao king of Egypt and his servants and his nobles ⁶⁽²⁰⁾and all his people and all the mixed peoples and all the kings of the allophyles, Ascalon and Gaza and Akkaron and the remnant of Azotus ⁷⁽²¹⁾and Idumea and Moabitis and the sons of Ammon ⁸⁽²²⁾and the kings of Tyre and the kings of Sidon and the kings who are across the sea ⁹⁽²³⁾and Dedan and Thaiman and Ros and every one shaven on his face ¹⁰⁽²⁴⁾and all the mixed peoples that lodge in the wilderness ¹¹⁽²⁵⁾and all the kings of Ailam and all the kings of the Persians ¹²⁽²⁶⁾and all the kings from the east wind, those far and those near, each with his brother, and all the kingdoms that are on the surface of the earth.

13(27) And you shall say to them, Thus did the Lord Almighty say: Drink, and get drunk, and vomit, and you will fall and rise no more from before the dagger that I am sending among you.

14(28) And it will be if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand so as to drink, and you shall say: Thus did the Lord say: In drinking you shall drink, ¹⁵⁽²⁹⁾because I am beginning to bring evil on a city that my name is called on it, and you will not be cleansed with cleansing, because I am summoning a dagger against those settled on the earth.

16(30) And you shall prophesy against them these words, and you will say:

The Lord will give an oracle from on high;
from his holy place give forth his voice;

he will give a word as an oracle over his
         place,

and they will answer, “aided”^a, like those
that reap,

and destruction has come on the
         inhabitants of the earth,

¹⁷⁽³¹⁾ on a part of the earth,
because the Lord has an indictment
         against the nations;

he is entering into judgment with all flesh,
and the impious will be given over to a
         dagger,
                                             says the Lord.

¹⁸⁽³²⁾ Thus did the Lord say:

Behold, evil is coming
from nation to nation,

and a great tempest is issuing
from the farthest part of the earth!

19(33) And there shall be slain by the Lord on the day of the Lord from one part of the earth even to another part of the earth. They shall not be interred; they shall become dung on the surface of the ground.

²⁰⁽³⁴⁾ Shout, you shepherds, and cry out,
and beat yourselves, you rams of the
         sheep,

because your days for slaughter have been
         fulfilled,

and you shall fall like the choice rams.

²¹⁽³⁵⁾ And flight shall perish from the shepherds,
and deliverance from the rams of the
         sheep.

²²⁽³⁶⁾ A sound of a cry of the shepherds
and a shouting of the rams of the
         sheep,

because the Lord despoiled their fatted
         animals!

²³⁽³⁷⁾ And the lodgings of peace will cease
from before the wrath of my anger.

²⁴⁽³⁸⁾ Like a lion he has left his lodging,
because their land became untrodden
from before the great dagger.

33 ^(26.1) At the beginning of King Ioakim son of Iosias, this word came from the Lord: ²Thus did the Lord say: Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and you will give an oracle to all the Judeans that come to do obeisance in the house of the Lord all the words, which I instructed you to give them as an oracle; do not hold back a thing. ³Perhaps they will hear and will turn each from his evil way, and I will cease from the evils that I am planning to do to them on account of their evil doings. ⁴And you shall say: Thus did the Lord say: If you do not hear me, to walk in my precepts that I have given before you, ⁵to heed the words of my servants the prophets whom I send to you early in the morning, and I sent and you did not heed me, ⁶I will also give over this house like Selo, and I will give over the city as a curse, to all the nations of the entire earth.

7 And the priests and the pseudo-prophets and all the people heard Ieremias speaking these words in the house of the Lord. ⁸And it happened when Ieremias had stopped speaking all that the Lord had instructed him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the pseudo-prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, “You shall die by death! ⁹Whatever did you prophesy in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Selo, and this city shall be made desolate of inhabitants’?” And all the people assembled against Ieremias in the house of the Lord.

10 And Iouda’s rulers heard this matter, and they came up from the king’s house to the house of the Lord and took their seat in the entry of the new gate of the house of the Lord. ¹¹And the priests and the pseudo-prophets said to the rulers and to all the people, “A sentence of death on this person, because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears.”

12 And Ieremias spoke to the rulers and to all the people, saying, “The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and this city all the words you have heard. ¹³And now make your ways and your deeds better, and obey the voice of the Lord, and the Lord will cease from the evils that he has spoken against you. ¹⁴And behold, I am in your hands. Do with me as seems advantageous and as is better to you. ¹⁵Only, in knowing you will know that, if you kill me, you are bringing innocent blood upon yourselves and upon this city and upon its inhabitants in it, because in truth the Lord has sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears.”

16 And the rulers and all the people said to the priests and to the pseudo-prophets, “There is no sentence of death on this person, because he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord, our God.” ¹⁷And men of the elders of the land arose and said to the entire gathering of the people, ¹⁸“There was Michaias the Morasthite in the days of King Hezekias of Iouda, and he said to all the people of Iouda: ‘Thus did the Lord say,

Sion shall be plowed like a field;
and Ierousalem shall become untrodden,
and the mountain of the house a forest
         grove.’

¹⁹Surely, when killing, Hezekias and all Iouda did not kill him? Was it not that they feared the Lord and that they entreated the face of the Lord, and the Lord ceased from the evils that he had spoken against them? And we did great evils against our souls!”

20 There was a person prophesying in the name of the Lord, Ourias son of Samaias from Kariathiarim, and he prophesied concerning this land according to all the words of Ieremias. ²¹And King Ioakim and all the rulers heard all his words, and they were seeking to kill him, and Ourias heard of it and entered into Egypt. ²²And the king sent men to Egypt, ²³and they brought him from there and led him to the king, and he struck him with a dagger and threw him into the burial place of the sons of his people.

24 In any case, the hand of Achikam son of Saphan was with Ieremias so as not to hand him over into the hands of the people to kill him.

34 ^(27.2) Thus did the Lord say: Make bonds and collars, and put them around your neck. ²⁽³⁾And you will send them to the king of Idumea and to the king of Moab and to the king of the sons of Ammon and to the king of Tyre and to the king of Sidon by the hands of their envoys who are coming to meet them in Ierousalem, to King Sedekias of Iouda. ³⁽⁴⁾And you will instruct them to say to their masters: Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel say: Thus you shall say to your masters: ⁴⁽⁵⁾Because it is I who by my great strength and my lofty effort have made the earth, I will also give it to whom it may seem good in my eyes, ⁵⁽⁶⁾I have given the earth to King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon to be subject to him, and the wild animals of the field to work for him.

6(8) And the nation and the kingdom, as many as do not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will visit them with dagger and with famine, said the Lord, until they fail in his hand. ⁷⁽⁹⁾And you, do not keep heeding your pseudo-prophets and your diviners and your dreamers and your soothsayers and your sorcerers, when they say, “You shall not work for the king of Babylon,” ⁸⁽¹⁰⁾because they are prophesying lies to you so as to distance you far from your land. ⁹⁽¹¹⁾And the nation that brings its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and works for him, I will also leave him on his own land, and it will work for him and will live in it^a.

10(12) And I spoke to King Sedekias of Iouda according to all these words, saying: Bring your neck, and work for the king of Babylon, ¹¹⁽¹⁴⁾because they are prophesying wrong things to you, ¹²⁽¹⁵⁾because I did not send them, quoth the Lord, and they are prophesying wrongly in my name so as to destroy you, and you will perish, you and your prophets who are [wrongly] prophesying lies to you.

13(16) I spoke to you and all this people and the priests, saying, Thus did the Lord say: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you, saying, “Behold, the vessels of the Lord’s house are returning from Babylon,” ^bbecause they are prophesying wrong things to you; ¹⁴⁽¹⁷⁾I did not send them^b. ¹⁵⁽¹⁸⁾If they are prophets and if there is a word of the Lord in them, let them counter me, ¹⁶⁽¹⁹⁾because thus did the Lord say: Even some of the remaining vessels, ¹⁷⁽²⁰⁾which the king of Babylon did not take when he exiled Iechonias from Ierousalem, ¹⁸⁽²²⁾shall enter into Babylon, says the Lord.

35 ^(28.1) And it happened in the fourth year of King Sedekias of Iouda, in the fifth month that the pseudo-prophet Hananias son of Azor, from Gabaon, said to me in the house of the Lord, in the sight of the priests and all the people, saying, ²“Thus did the Lord say: I have crushed the yoke of the king of Babylon. ³Yet two years of days and I will bring back to this place the vessels of the Lord’s house ⁴and Iechonias and the exile of Iouda, because I will crush the yoke of the king of Babylon.”

5 And Ieremias said to Hananias in the sight of all the people and in the sight of the priests who stood in the house of the Lord, ⁶and Ieremias said, “Truly, thus may the Lord do; may the Lord establish the word which you prophesy, to bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the Lord and all the exile. ⁷In any case, hear a word of the Lord that I speak in your ears and in the ears of all the people. ⁸The prophets who preceded me and preceded you^c from ancient times also prophesied with reference to much land and great kingdoms for war. ⁹As for the prophet who prophesied for peace—when the matter came to pass, they would know the prophet, him whom the Lord had sent in faithfulness.”

10 And Hananias in the sight of all the people took the collars from the neck of Ieremias and crushed them. ¹¹And Hananias said in the sight of the people, saying, “Thus did the Lord say: Thus I will crush the yoke of the king of Babylon from the necks of all the nations.” And Ieremias went on his way.

12 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias after Hananias had crushed the collars from his neck: ¹³Go, and say to Hananias, saying, Thus did the Lord say: Wooden collars you have crushed, and I will make iron collars in place of them!—¹⁴because thus did the Lord say: I have put an iron yoke on the neck of all the nations so that they might work for the king of Babylon. ¹⁵And Ieremias said to Hananias, “The Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust wrongly. ¹⁶Therefore thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am sending you from off the earth. In this year you will die.” ¹⁷And he died in the seventh month.

36 ^(29.1)And these are the words of the book, which Ieremias sent from Ierousalem to the elders of the exile and to the priests and to the pseudo-prophets, as a letter to the exile in Babylon and to all the people, ²later than when King Iechonias and the queen and the eunuchs and every free person and prisoner and artisan had departed from Ierousalem, ³by the hand of Eleasa son of Saphan and Gamarias son of Chelkias, whom King Sedekias of Iouda sent to the king of Babylon in Babylon, saying: ⁴Thus did the Lord God of Israel say to the exile which I exiled from Ierousalem: ⁵Build houses, and settle down, and plant orchards, and eat their fruit, ⁶and take wives, and produce sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, and multiply, and do not decrease, ⁷and seek for peace of the land into which I have exiled you there, and pray to the Lord on their behalf, because in their peace there will be peace for you—⁸because thus did the Lord say: Do not let the pseudo-prophets who are among you persuade you, and do not let your diviners persuade you, and do not listen for your dreams that you dream, ⁹because it is wrong what they are prophesying to you in my name, and I did not send them—¹⁰because thus did the Lord say: When Babylon’s seventy years are about to be completed, I will visit you, and I will establish my words upon you to bring your people back to this place. ¹¹And I will plan a plan of peace for you, and not to give you these evils. ¹²And pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³And seek me out, and you will find me, because you will seek me with your whole heart, ¹⁴and I will appear to you.

15 Because you have said, “The Lord appointed prophets for us in Babylon,” ²¹thus did the Lord say with reference to Achiab and with reference to Sedekias: Behold, I am delivering them into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall strike them before your eyes. ²²And from them they shall receive a curse in the whole exile of Iouda in Babylon, saying: “May the Lord make you as he made Sedekias and as Achiab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire,” ²³on account of the lawlessness they perpetrated in Israel, and they would commit adultery with the wives of their citizens and gave as oracle in my name a word that I did not instruct them, and it is I that am witness, quoth the Lord.

24 And to Samaias the Nelamite you shall say: ²⁵I did not send you in my name and to say to the priest Sophonias son of Maasaias: ²⁶The Lord has given you as priest instead of the priest Iodae to be an officer in the house of the Lord over every person prophesying and every person in a frenzy, and you will give him over to the lockup and to the sluice. ²⁷And now why have you not reviled Ieremias of Anathoth who prophesied to you? ²⁸ Has he not for this reason sent to us in Babylon, saying, “It is far off; build houses, and settle down, and plant gardens, and eat their fruit”?

29 And Sophonias read the document in the ears of Ieremias. ³⁰And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias, saying: ³¹Send to the exile, saying, Thus did the Lord say with reference to Samaias the Nelamite: Whereas Samaias has prophesied to you, and I did not send him, and he has made you trust wrongly, ³²therefore thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am going to visit upon Samaias and upon his family, and he shall not have a person in your midst to see the good that I am going to do for you.

37 ^(30.1)The word that came to Ieremias from the Lord to say: ²Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say, saying: Write in a book all the words that I gave you as oracles, ³because, behold, days are coming, quoth the Lord, and I will bring back the exile of my people, Israel and Iouda, said the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall have dominion over it.

4 And these are the words that the Lord spoke with reference to Israel and Iouda.

⁵ Thus did the Lord say:

A sound of fear you will hear.
Fear there is, and no peace.

⁶ Ask, and see if a male gave birth,
and about fear, with which they will hold
         on to loin and safety.

[Why have I seen every person, and his
         hands are on his loins?]

Faces turned, they became jaundiced,

⁷ because that day is great
and there is none like it;

it is a limited time for Iakob,

⁸     and from this he shall be saved.

(8) On that day, said the Lord, I will shatter a yoke from off their neck, and I will burst their bonds, and they shall no more work for foreigners. ⁹ And they shall work for the Lord, their God, and I will raise up Dauid as their king for them.

¹² Thus did the Lord say:

I raised up a fracture;
your wound was grievous.

¹³ There is no one to judge your cause;
you were doctored into pain;
there is no benefit for you.

¹⁴ All your friends have forgotten you;
they will never inquire;

because I struck you a blow of an enemy,
firm discipline,

your sins multiplied relative to all your
         injustice.

¹⁶ Therefore all who eat you shall be
         consumed,

and all your enemies shall eat all their
own flesh,

and those who plunder you shall become
         plunder,

and all those who ravage you I will give
over to ravaging,

¹⁷ because I will bring up your healing
and I will cure you from a painful blow,
                                           quoth the Lord,

because you were called dispersed:
“She is our prey, because there is no one
         seeking for her!”

¹⁸ Thus did the Lord say:

Behold, I am bringing back the exile of
         Iakob

and will have mercy on his captivity, and a city shall be built upon its^a mound,
and the shrine will sit on its rightful site.

¹⁹ And out of them shall come singers
and the sound of merrymakers.

And I will make them many,
and they shall not be made few.

²⁰ And their sons shall go in as formerly,
and their testimonies shall be rectified
         before me,

and I will visit those who oppress them.

²¹ And his stronger ones shall be over them,
and his ruler shall come out from his
         midst,

and I will gather them, and they shall return
         to me,

because who is this that gave his heart to
return to me?
                                    quoth the Lord,

²³ because a fierce wrath of the Lord has gone
         forth;

a revolving wrath has gone forth;

it will come upon the impious.

²⁴ Wrath of the Lord’s anger shall not turn
         back

until he has executed

and until he has accomplished

the undertaking of his heart.

In the latter days you will understand them.

38 ^(31.1)At that time, said the Lord, I will become a god to the race of Israel, and they shall become a people to me.

² Thus did the Lord say:

I found him warm in a wilderness with
         people
that perished by dagger.

Go, and do not destroy Israel!

³ The Lord appeared to him from far away.

I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have drawn you into
         compassion.

⁴ Again I will build you, and you shall be
         built,

O virgin Israel!

Again you shall take your tambourine
and go forth with a gathering of jesters.

⁵ Again you shall plant vineyards
on the mountains of Samaria.
Plant, and praise,

⁶ because it is a day of calling of people
who argue in the mountains of Ephraim:

“Rise up, and go up to Sion,
to the Lord our God,”

⁷ because thus did the Lord say to Iakob:

Be glad, and neigh for the head of nations;
make heard, and give praise;
say, “The Lord saved his people,
the remnant of Israel.”

⁸ Behold, I am bringing them from the north,
and I will gather them from the farthest
         part of the earth

at the feast of phasek^b,

and you will breed a large crowd,
and they shall return here.

⁹ With weeping they went out,
and with consolation I will bring them
         up,

making them lodge by canals of waters
in a straight road,

and they shall not wander in it,

because I became a father to Israel,
and Ephraim is my firstborn.

¹⁰ Hear a word of the Lord, O nations,
and declare it in the islands far off; say,

“He who winnowed Israel will gather him
and will keep him, as he who feeds his
         flock.”

¹¹ Because the Lord has redeemed Iakob,
he has delivered him from the hand of
         people stronger than he.

¹² And they shall come and be glad on the
         mountain of Sion,

and they shall come to the good things of
the Lord,

to a land of grain and wine
and fruit and cattle and sheep,

and their soul shall become like a fruitful
         tree,
and they shall hunger no more.

¹³ Then shall girls rejoice in a gathering of
         young men,

and the old shall rejoice,

and I will turn their mourning into joy,
and I will make them glad.

¹⁴ I will magnify and intoxicate the soul of the
         priests, sons of Leui,

and my people shall be satisfied with my
good things.

¹⁵ Thus did the Lord say:

A voice of lamentation and weeping
and mourning was heard in Rama;

Rachel did not want to stop weeping for her
         sons,
because they are not.

¹⁶ Thus did the Lord say:

Let your voice cease from weeping,
and your eyes from tears,

because there is a wage for your works,
and they shall come back from a land of
         enemies;

¹⁷ there will be permanence for your children.

¹⁸ In hearing I heard Ephraim mourning:

“You instructed me, and I was instructed;
I was not trained like a calf.

Bring me back, and I shall come back,
because you are the Lord my God.

¹⁹ Because ^clater than^c my captivity I repented,
and ^dlater than that I became^d aware, I
         sighed for days of shame,

and I yielded to you,
because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”

²⁰ Ephraim is my beloved son,
a child to delight in;

because, since my words are in him,
I will remember him with remembrance.

Therefore I hurried for him;
in having mercy I will have mercy on
         him,
                                            quoth the Lord.

²¹ Set up for yourself sionim^a;
make timrorim^b;
give your heart to the shoulders.

Return by the road which you went,
O virgin Israel.

Return to your cities in mourning.

²² How long will you turn away,
O dishonored daughter?—

because the Lord has created salvation for a
         new planting

in which people will go about in
safety.

23 Thus did the Lord say: Once more they shall speak this word in the land of Iouda and in his cities when I bring back his captivity:

“Blessed be the Lord
on his righteous, holy mountain!”

²⁴And there shall be people dwelling in the cities of Iouda, and in all his land, together with the farmer, and he shall be ^craised up^c with a flock,

²⁵ because I intoxicated every thirsty soul
and every hungry soul I replenished.

²⁶ For this reason I awoke and saw, and my sleep was pleasant to me.

27 Therefore behold, days are coming, quoth the Lord, and I will sow Israel and Iouda with the seed of a human and the seed of an animal. ²⁸And it shall be just as I used to watch over them to pull down and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, quoth the Lord. ²⁹In those days they shall not say:

“The fathers have eaten unripe grapes,
and the children’s teeth were set on
         edge.”

³⁰But each shall die for his own sins, and the teeth of him who eats unripe grapes shall be set on edge.

31 Behold, days are coming, quoth the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Iouda. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by their hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not abide in my covenant, and I was unconcerned for them, quoth the Lord, ³³because this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, quoth the Lord. Giving I will give my laws in their mind, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will become a god to them, and they shall become a people to me. ³⁴And they shall not teach, each his fellow citizen and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they shall all know me, from their small even to their great, because I will be gracious regarding their injustices, and remember their sins no more.

³⁵⁽³⁷⁾If the sky be elevated to midair,
                                          quoth the Lord,

and if the floor of the earth below be
         brought low,

even then I will not reject the race of
Israel,
                                  quoth the Lord,

because of all they have done.

³⁶⁽³⁵⁾Thus did the Lord say,

who gives the sun as light by day,
moon and stars as light by night,

and a scream in the sea
and its waves made a booming
         noise—

the Lord Almighty is his name:

³⁷⁽³⁶⁾If these laws cease
from before me, quoth the Lord,

also the race of Israel will cease
to be a nation before me, all the days.

38 Behold, days are coming, quoth the Lord, and a city shall be built for the Lord from the tower of Hananeel to the gate of the corner. ³⁹And its measuring shall go out before them to the hills of Gareb, and it shall be encompassed all round with a circle of choice stones. ⁴⁰And all hasaremoth^d as far as Nachal Kedron, to the corner of the gate of horses in the east, a holy precinct to the Lord, and it shall never again fail and shall never ever be destroyed.

39 ^(32.1)The word that came from the Lord to Ieremias in the tenth year of King Sedekias; this was the eighteenth year for King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon. ²And the force of the king of Babylon raised a barricade against Ierousalem, and Ieremias was being confined in the court of the guard that was in the house of the king ³in which King Sedekias had shut him up, saying, “Why do you prophesy, saying: Thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am giving this city in the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it, ⁴and Sedekias shall not be saved out of the hand of the Chaldeans, because in handing over he shall be handed over into the hands of the king of Babylon, and his mouth shall speak to his mouth and his eyes shall see his eyes, ⁵and Sedekias shall enter into Babylon and be seated there.”

6 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias, saying: ⁷Behold, Hanameel son of Salom your father’s brother is coming to you, saying, “Acquire for yourself the field that is at Anathoth, because the right of acquisition is yours to take.” ⁸And Hanameel son of Salom my father’s brother came to me in the court of the guard and said to me, “Acquire my field that is in the land of Beniamin at Anathoth, because the right to acquire is yours, and you are the elder. And I knew that it was a word of the Lord.

9 And I acquired the field from Hanameel son of my father’s brother and weighed out to him seventeen shekels of silver. ¹⁰And I wrote in a document and sealed it and got witnesses to witness and weighed the silver on a scale. ¹¹And I took the document of purchase, the sealed one and the open one, ¹²and I gave it to Barouch son of Nerias son of Maasaias, in the sight of Hanameel son of my father’s brother and in the sight of those who were present and signed the document of purchase, and in the sight of the Judeans who were in the court of the guard. ¹³And in their sight I instructed Barouch, saying, ¹⁴Thus did the Lord Almighty say: Take this document of purchase and the open document, and you shall put it in an earthenware jar in order that it may last for rather many days, ¹⁵because thus did the Lord say: Fields and houses and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

16 And after I had given the document of purchase to Barouch son of Nerias, I prayed to the Lord, saying: ¹⁷“You That Are, Lord! It is you who made the sky and the earth by your great strength and by your high arm! Nothing shall be hidden from you ¹⁸when you do mercy for thousands and repay the sins of fathers into the laps of their children after them, you the great, the strong God, ¹⁹Lord of great counsel and powerful in deeds, the great God Almighty, Lord of great name. Your eyes are on the ways of the sons of men, to give each according to his way, ²⁰you who performed signs and wonders in the land of Egypt to this day both in Israel and among the earthborn, and you have made yourself a name, as this day. ²¹And you brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and with wonders and with a strong hand and with a high arm ²²and with great spectacles, and you gave them this land, which you swore to their fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey, ²³and they entered and took it and did not obey your voice and did not walk by your ordinances; all you commanded them they did not do. And you have made all these evils to happen to them. ²⁴Behold, a crowd has come against^a the city to take it, and the city has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting it from before the dagger and the famine. As you spoke, so it happened. ²⁵And you are saying to me, “Acquire for yourself the field for money.” And I wrote a document and sealed it and had witnesses witness it, and the city was given into the hands of the Chaldeans.

26 And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: ²⁷I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; surely nothing will be hidden from me? ²⁸Therefore, thus did the Lord say: When this city is surrendered it will be given over into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall seize it. ²⁹And the Chaldeans who are fighting against this city shall come and shall burn this city with fire, and they shall burn down the houses in which, on their roofs, they burnt incense to the goddess Baal and they would pour libations to other gods so as to embitter me, ³⁰because the sons of Israel and the sons of Iouda were alone in doing evil in my sight from their youth, ³¹because this city existed for my wrath and for my anger, from the day they built it even until this day, to remove it from before me, ³²because of all the evils of the sons of Israel and Iouda that they did to embitter me, they and their kings and their rulers and their priests and their prophets, men of Iouda and those that inhabit Ierousalem. ³³And they have turned their back to me and not their face, and I have taught them in the early morning, and I have taught, and they did not hear to accept instruction. ³⁴And they set up their defilements in the house, where my name is called on it, in their impurities. ³⁵And they built the altars^b to the goddess Baal, which are in the valley of Hennom’s son, to offer up their sons and their daughters to ^cthe king^c, things which I did not instruct them to do, and it did not arise in my heart that they do this abomination so as to cause Iouda to sin.

36 And now thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say with reference to the city of which you say, “It will be given over into the hands of the king of Babylon by dagger and by famine and by dispatch”: ³⁷Behold, I am gathering them from every land, there where I dispersed them in my wrath and in my anger and in great irritation, and I will bring them back to this place, and I will settle them in confidence. ³⁸And they shall become a people to me, and I will become a god to them. ³⁹And I will give them another way and another heart, to fear me all the days, both for their own good and for that of their children after them. ⁴⁰And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, which I will not turn away from behind them, and I will assign my fear to their heart so that they may not turn away from me. ⁴¹And I will visit them to do good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, both with all my heart and with all my soul, ⁴²because thus did the Lord say: Just as I have brought all these great evils upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I told them. ⁴³And fields shall be acquired again in the land of which you are saying, It is untrodden by human being or animal, and they were given over into the hands of the Chaldeans. ⁴⁴And they shall acquire fields with money, and you shall write in a document and seal it and have witnesses witness it in the land of Beniamin and around Ierousalem and in the cities of Iouda and in the cities of the mountain and in the cities of the Sephela and in the cities of the Nageb, because I will bring back their exiles.

40 ^(33.1)And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias a second time, and he was still confined in the court of the guard, saying: ²Thus did the Lord say, when he was making earth and forming it to establish it—the Lord is his name: ³Cry to me, and I will answer you and will tell you great and mighty things, them that you have not known, ⁴because thus did the Lord say concerning the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the king of Iouda that have been torn down for stakes and breastworks ⁵to do battle against the Chaldeans and to fill it with corpses of people whom I struck in my wrath and in my anger, and I turned away my face from them for all their acts of wickedness. ⁶Behold, I am bringing it soundness and healing, and I will make clear to them and heal it and make for them peace and trust. ⁷I will return the exile of Iouda and the exile of Israel and build them as they were before. ⁸And I will cleanse them from all their injustices which they sinned against me, and I will not remember their sins which they sinned against me and they withdrew from me. ⁹And it shall be for gladness and for praise and for greatness for all the people of the earth, whoever shall hear of all the good that I shall perform, and they shall fear and be embittered concerning all the good and concerning all the peace which I shall make for them.

10 Thus did the Lord say: There shall yet be heard in this place of which you say, “It is a wilderness ^aapart from^a human beings and animals,” in the cities of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem, that are desolate, to the point that there are no human being or animal, ¹¹a voice of gladness and a voice of joy, a voice of bridegroom and a voice of bride, a voice of people saying,

“Acknowledge the Lord Almighty,
because the Lord is kind,
because his mercy is forever!”

And they will bring gifts into the house of the Lord, because I will return the exile of that land as before, said the Lord.

12 Thus did the Lord say: There shall again be in this place that is waste and in all its cities, lodgings of shepherds resting sheep. ¹³In the cities of the hill country and in the cities of the Sephela and in the cities of the Nageb and in the land of Beniamin and in those around Ierousalem and in the cities of Iouda sheep shall again pass under the hand of one who counts them, said the Lord.

41 ^(34.1)The word that came to Ieremias from the Lord, and King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon and all his army and all the land under his dominion were fighting against Ierousalem and against all the cities of Iouda, saying: ²Thus did the Lord say: Go to King Sedekias of Iouda, and you shall say to him: Thus did the Lord say: In surrender this city shall be surrendered into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall seize it and burn it with fire. ³Even you shall not be saved from his hand, and with a seizing you shall be seized and given over into his hands, and your eyes shall see his eyes, and you shall enter into Babylon. ⁴But hear a word of the Lord, O King Sedekias of Iouda! Thus says the Lord, ⁵You shall die in peace. And as they wept for your fathers, those who reigned before you, they shall also weep for you and lament for you: “Alas, Adon^b,” because I have spoken a word, said the Lord.

6 And Ieremias spoke all these words to King Sedekias in Ierousalem, ⁷and the force of the king of Babylon was fighting against Ierousalem and against the cities of Iouda, against Lachis and against Azeka, because these were left among the cities of Iouda as strong cities.

8 The word that came to Ieremias from the Lord, after King Sedekias had concluded a covenant with the people to call for a release, ⁹to send off free each his Hebrew male servant and each his Hebrew female servant so as not to have a man from Iouda in slavery. ¹⁰And all the nobles and all the people, who had entered into the covenant to dismiss each his male servant and each his female servant, reneged and let them ¹¹be their male and female servants. ¹²And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias, saying: ¹³Thus did the Lord say: It was I that made a covenant with your fathers in the day I delivered them from the land of Egypt, from a house of slavery, saying, ¹⁴“When six years are complete, you shall dismiss your Hebrew brother, who will be sold to you. And he shall work for you for six years, and you shall send him off free.” And they did not hear me and did not incline their ear. ¹⁵And today they have turned to do what is right before my eyes, to call for a release, each of his fellow, and they concluded a covenant before me in the house where my name is called on it. ¹⁶And you turned and profaned my name when each of you turned back his male servant and each his female servant, whom you had sent off free, for their own self, as male and female servants for you. ¹⁷Therefore, thus did the Lord say: You have not obeyed me by calling for a release, each pertaining to his fellow. Behold, I am calling for a release for you to the dagger and to death and to the famine, and I will give you as a dispersion to all the kingdoms of the earth. ¹⁸And as for the men who have transgressed my covenant, those that did not stand by my covenant that they made before me, I will render them as the bull calf which they made, to work for it^c: ¹⁹the rulers of Iouda and those with power and the priests and the people. ²⁰And I will hand them over to their enemies. And their carcasses shall become food for the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth. ²¹And as for King Sedekias of Judea and their rulers, I will hand them over into the hands of their enemies—and the force of the king of Babylon is for those that are running away from them. ²²Behold, I am giving instructions, quoth the Lord, and will bring them back to this land, and they will fight against it and take it and burn it down with fire, and the cities of Iouda, and I will render them desolate ^aapart from^a inhabitants.

42 ^(35.1)The word that came to Ieremias from the Lord in the days of King Ioakim of Iouda, saying: ²Go to the house of Archabin^a, and you shall bring them into the house of the Lord, into one of the courts, and you shall offer them wine to drink. ³And I brought out Iezonias son of Ieremin son of Chabasin and his brothers and his sons and the whole house of Archabin^a. ⁴ And I brought them into the house of the Lord into the priestly chamber of the sons of Hananias son of Godolias, man of God, which was near the house of the rulers who were over the house of Maasaias son of Selom, the keeper of the court. ⁵And I gave before them a jug of wine and cups, and I said, “Drink wine.” ⁶And they said, “We will not drink wine, because our father Ionadab son of Rechab commanded us, saying, ‘You shall not drink wine, you and your sons forever, ⁷and you shall not build a house, and you shall not sow seed, and you shall not have a vineyard, because you shall live in tents all your days, that you may live many days in the land in which you spent time in it.’ ⁸And we have obeyed the voice of our father Ionadab so as not to drink wine all our days, we and our wives and our sons and our daughters, ⁹and so as not to build houses to live there. And we did not have vineyard and field and seed, ¹⁰and we have lived in tents and obeyed and acted in accordance with all that our father Ionadab commanded us. ¹¹And it happened, when King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon came up against the land, we also said, ‘Come, and let us enter into Ierou-salem from before the force of the Chaldeans and from before the force of the Assyrians,’ and we are living there.”

12 And a word of the Lord came to me, saying: ¹³Thus says the Lord: Go, and say to a person of Iouda and the inhabitants of Ierousalem, Will you not receive instruction to obey my words? ¹⁴The sons of Ionadab son of Rechab upheld the dictum which he commanded his children so as not to drink wine, and they did not drink. And I spoke to you early, and I spoke, and you did not obey. ¹⁵And I have sent to you my servants the prophets, saying, “Turn, everyone from his evil way, and make your doings better, and do not go after other gods to be slaves to them, and live in the land that I gave to you and your fathers.” And you did not incline your ears and did not obey. ¹⁶And the sons of Ionadab son of Rechab have upheld the command of their father, but this people have not obeyed me. ¹⁷Therefore, thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am bringing on Iouda and on the inhabitants of Ierousalem all the evils that I have spoken against them.

18 Therefore, thus did the Lord say: Whereas the sons of Ionadab son of Rechab have obeyed the command of their father, to do just as their father commanded them, ¹⁹Ionadab son of Rechab shall not lack a man to stand before me for all the days of the earth.

43 ^(36.1)In the fourth year of Ioakim son of Iosias, king of Iouda, a word of the Lord came to me saying: ²Take for yourself a small roll of a book, and write on it all the words that I gave you as oracles against Ierousalem and against Iouda and against all the nations, from the day of my speaking to you, from the days of King Iosias of Iouda even until this day. ³Perhaps the house of Iouda will hear of all the evil that I intend to do to them in order that they turn from their evil way, and I shall be gracious regarding their injustices and their sins.

4 And Ieremias called Barouch son of Nerias, and Barouch^b wrote on a small roll of a book from the mouth of Ieremias all the words of the Lord that he had given as oracles to him. ⁵And Ieremias commanded Barouch, saying, “I am under guard. I shall not be able to enter into the house of the Lord, ⁶and on a day of fasting you shall read from this small roll into the ears of the people in the Lord’s house and in the ears of every one of Iouda, those that come out from their city—you shall read to them. ⁷Perhaps mercy for them^c will come about before the Lord, and they^c will turn them out of their evil way, because great is the anger and wrath of the Lord that ^bthe Lord^b spoke against this people.” ⁸And Barouch did according to all that Ieremias commanded him, to read in the book the Lord’s words in the Lord’s house.

9 And it happened in the eighth year of King Ioakim, in the ninth month, all the people in Ierousalem and the house of Iouda proclaimed in assembly a fast before the Lord. ¹⁰And in the ears of the people, Barouch would read words of Ieremias from the book, in the house of the Lord, in the house of Gamarias son of Saphan the secretary, in the upper court, at the entry of the new gate of the Lord’s house.

11 And Michaias son of Gamarias son of Saphan heard all the words of the Lord from the book. ¹²And he went down to the king’s house, into the secretary’s house, and behold, all the rulers were sitting there: Elisama the secretary and Dalaias son of Selemias and Ionathan son of Akchobor and Gamarias son of Saphan and Sedekias son of Hananias and all the rulers. ¹³And Michaias told them all the words that he had heard Barouch read in the ears of the people. ¹⁴And all the rulers sent Ioudin son of Nathanias son of Selemias son of Chousi to Barouch son of Nerias, saying, “The small roll in which you were reading in it, in the ears of the people, take it into your hand, and come.” And Barouch ^dson of Nerias^d took the small roll and went down to them. ¹⁵And they said to him, “Again read it into our ears.” And Barouch read. ¹⁶And it happened, when they heard all the words, they took counsel, each with his fellow, and they said, “In reporting let us report all these words to the king.” ¹⁷And they questioned Barouch, saying, “From where did you write all these words?” ¹⁸And Barouch said, “From his mouth Ieremias proclaimed to me all these words, and I would write them in a book.” ¹⁹And they said to Barouch, “Go, hide, you and Ieremias, and let no person know where you are.”

20 And they entered to the king in the court, and the small roll they gave to be watched in the house of Elisama, and they reported all the words to the king. ²¹And the king sent Ioudin to take the small roll, and he took it from the house of Elisama, and Ioudin read it into the ears of the king and into the ears of all the rulers who stood around the king. ²²And the king was sitting in his winter house, and there was a hearth of fire in front of him. ²³And it happened when Ioudin would read three or four columns, he^a would cut them off with the secretary’s penknife and would throw them into the fire that was in the hearth, until the entire roll had vanished into the fire that was in the hearth. ²⁴And the king and his servants, who were hearing all these words, were not alarmed, and they did not tear their garments. ²⁵And Elnathan and Dalaias^b and Gamarias suggested to the king not to burn the small roll. ²⁶And the king commanded Ieremeel the king’s son and Saraias son of Esriel to arrest Barouch and Ieremias. And they were hidden.

27 And after the king had burned the small roll, all the words that Barouch wrote from the mouth of Ieremias, a word of the Lord came to Ieremias, saying: ²⁸Again, take another small roll, and write all the words that were in the small roll, which words King Ioakim has burned. ²⁹And you shall say: Thus did the Lord say, You burned this small roll, saying, Why have you written on it, saying, In coming the king of Babylon will come and destroy utterly this land, and human and animals will fail from it? ³⁰Therefore thus did the Lord say with reference to King Ioakim of Iouda: He shall have no one to sit upon the throne of Dauid, and his carcass shall lie cast out in the heat of the day and in the frost of the night. ³¹And I will visit upon him and upon his family and upon his servants, and I will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of Ierousalem and upon the land of Iouda all the evils, which I have spoken to them—and they did not listen.

32 And Barouch took another small roll and wrote on it from the mouth of Ieremias all the words of the book, which words Ioakim had burned, and more words like these were yet added to them.

44 ^(37.1)And Sedekias son of Iosias became king in place of Ioakim, whom King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon made king to be king over Iouda. ²And he and his servants and the people of the land did not obey the words of the Lord that he spoke by the hand of Ieremias.

3 And King Sedekias sent Ioachal son of Selemias and the priest Sophonias son of Maasaias to Ieremias, saying, “Pray for us to the Lord.” ⁴And Ieremias went and passed through the midst of the city, and they had not consigned him to the house of the guard. ⁵And a force of Pharao had come out of Egypt, and the Chaldeans heard news of them, and they withdrew from Ierousalem.

6 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias, saying: ⁷Thus did the Lord say: Thus you shall say to the king of Iouda, who sent to you to inquire of me, Behold, Pharao’s force, which came out for assistance, will return to the land of Egypt. ⁸And the Chaldeans themselves shall return and fight against this city, and they shall seize it and burn it with fire, ⁹because thus did the Lord say: Do not suppose in your souls, saying, “In departing the Chaldeans will go away from us,” for they will not go away. ¹⁰Even if you struck the whole force of the Chaldeans, those who are fighting you, and there remained of them some pierced, each in his place, these would rise up and burn this city with fire.

11 And it happened, when the force of the Chaldeans had withdrawn from Ierousalem from before Pharao’s force, ¹²Ieremias set out from Ierousalem to go to the land of Beniamin to buy property there among the people. ¹³And he was at the gate of Beniamin, and there was a person with whom he used to lodge, Sarouia son of Selemias son of Hananias, and he arrested Ieremias, saying, “You are fleeing to the Chaldeans.” ¹⁴And he said, “That is a lie; I am not fleeing to the Chaldeans.” And he did not listen to him, and Sarouia arrested Ieremias and brought him to the rulers. ¹⁵And the rulers were embittered against Ieremias, and they struck him and sent him to the house of the secretary Ionathan, because they had made this into a house of the guard. ¹⁶And Ieremias went into the house of the cistern and into the chereth^c and sat there many days.

17 And King Sedekias sent word and called him. And the king questioned him secretly to say if there was a word from the Lord. And he said, “There is! You shall be handed over into the hands of the king of Babylon.” ¹⁸And Ieremias said to the king, “What wrong have I done you and your servants and this people that you are giving me over into the house of the guard? ¹⁹And where are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, ‘The king of Babylon will not come against this land’? ²⁰And now, my lord king, let mercy for me come about before you, and why do you return me to the house of the secretary Ionathan? And shall I not die there?” ²¹And the king gave instructions, and they committed him to the court of the guard and would give him one loaf of bread a day from outside where they bake until the bread of the city was gone. And Ieremias sat in the court of the guard.

45 ^(38.1)And Saphatias son of Matthan and Godolias son of Paschor and Ioachal son of Selemias heard the words that Ieremias was speaking to the crowd, saying, ²Thus did the Lord say, He who lives in this city shall die by sword and by famine, and he who goes out to the Chaldeans shall live, and his soul shall be his windfall, and he shall live, ³because thus did the Lord say, In being handed over this city shall be handed over into the hands of the force of the king of Babylon, and he shall seize it. ⁴And they said to the king, “Let that person be put to death, because he is relaxing the hands of the people that fight, who are left in the city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this person does not utter an oracle of peace to this people but only hardship.” ⁵And the king said, “Behold, he is in your hands,” because the king was powerless against them. ⁶And they threw him into a cistern of Melchias, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, and they let him down into the cistern. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mire, and he was in the mire.

7 And Abdemelech the Ethiopian—and he was in the king’s house—heard that they had consigned Ieremias to the cistern. And the king was at the gate of Beniamin. ⁸And he went out to him, and he spoke to the king and said, ⁹“You acted wickedly in what you did to kill this person from before the famine, because there is no longer any bread in the city.” ¹⁰And the king commanded Abdemelech, saying, “Take in hand thirty persons from here, and bring him up out of the cistern so that he may not die.” ¹¹And Abdemelech took the persons and entered into the house of the king—the underground chamber—and took from there old rags and old ropes and threw them into the cistern to Ieremias. ¹²And he said, “Put these under the ropes.” And Ieremias did so. ¹³And they drew him up by the ropes and brought him up out of the cistern. And Ieremias sat in the court of the guard.

14 And the king sent word and called him to himself at the house of Aselisel^a, which is in the house of the Lord. And the king said to him, “I will ask you a matter, and do not hide any dictum from me.” ¹⁵And Ieremias said to the king, “If I tell you, will you not put me to death with death? And if I give you advice, you will not hear me.” ¹⁶And the king swore to him, saying, “The Lord lives, who made for us this life, if I shall kill you and if I shall give you into the hands of these people!”

17 And Ieremias said to him, “Thus did the Lord say, If in going out you go out to the leaders of the king of Babylon, your soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and you shall live and your house. ¹⁸And if you do not go out, this city shall be handed over into the hands of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and you shall not be saved.” ¹⁹And the king said to Ieremias, “I have a concern regarding the Judeans who have fled to the Chaldeans, lest they give me into their hands and they shall mock me.” ²⁰And Ieremias said, “They will not deliver you up. Obey a word of the Lord, which I say to you, and it shall be better for you, and your soul shall live. ²¹And if you are not willing to go out, this is the word the Lord has shown me: ²²And behold, all the women that are left in the house of the king of Iouda were being led out to the rulers of the king of Babylon, and they kept saying,

‘Your men of peace have misled you
and will overpower you,

and they will sink your feet in slipperiness;
they turned away from you.’

²³ And your wives and your children they shall lead out to the Chaldeans, and you shall not be saved, because you shall be seized by the hand of the king of Babylon, and this city shall be burned down.”

24 And the king said to him, “Let no person know any of these words, and you will not die. ²⁵ And if the rulers hear that I have spoken with you, and they come to you and say to you, Tell us what the king said to you; do not conceal it from us, and we will not kill you. And what did the king say to you?’ ²⁶And you shall say to them, ‘I am casting pity for me in the sight of the king so as not to return me to the house of Ionathan to die there.’ “ ²⁷And all the rulers came to Ieremias and questioned him, and he told them according to all these words which the king had commanded him. And they maintained silence, because a word of the Lord was not heard. ²⁸And Ieremias sat in the court of the guard until the time when Ierousalem was seized.

46 ^(39.1)And it happened in the ninth year of King Sedekias of Iouda, in the tenth month, King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon and all his force came against Ierousalem, and they were laying siege to it, ²and in the eleventh year of Sedekias, in the fourth month, on the ninth of the month, the city was breached. ³And all the leaders of the king of Babylon entered and sat in the middle gate: Nargalsarasar, Samagoth, Nabousarsachar, Nabousaris, Nargalsaraser, Rabamag and the rest of the leaders of the king of Babylon. ¹⁴And they sent and took Ieremias from the court of the guard and gave him to Godolias son of Achikam son of Saphan, and they brought him out, and he sat in the midst of the people.

15 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias in the court of the guard, saying: ¹⁶Go, and say to Abdemelech the Ethiopian: Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say: Behold, I am bringing my words against this city for evil and not for good. ¹⁷And I will save you on that day, and I shall not hand you over into the hands of the people, before them whom you fear, ¹⁸because in saving I will save you, and you shall not fall by sword, and your soul shall be your windfall, because you have trusted in me, quoth the Lord.

47 ^(40.1)The word that came from the Lord to Ieremias after Nabouzardan the chief cook from Dama sent him off, when he took him in handcuffs in the midst of the exile of Iouda, those led away to Babylon. ²And the chief cook took him and said to him, “The Lord, your God, has given in oracles these evils against this place, ³and the Lord acted, because you sinned against him and did not obey his voice. ⁴Behold, I have released you from the handcuffs on your hands. If it is good before you to come with me to Babylon, come, and I will set my eyes on you. ⁵But if not, depart, and return to Godolias son of Achikam son of Saphan, whom the king of Babylon has appointed in the land of Iouda, and live with him among the people in the land of Iouda. Go to all that is good in your eyes to go to.” And the chief cook gave him presents and sent him off. ⁶And he went to Godolias at Massepha and settled among the people who were left in the land.

7 And all the leaders of the force in the open country, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Godolias in the land and that he had committed to him men and their women, whom he had not exiled to Babylon. ⁸And there came to Godolias at Massepha Ismael son of Nathanias and Ioanan son of Karee and Saraia son of Thanaemeth and sons of Ophei the Netophati and Iezonias son of the Moochati, they and their men. ⁹And Godolias swore to them and their men, saying, “Do not be afraid before the servants of the Chaldeans. Settle in the land. and work for the king of Babylon, and it shall be better for you. ¹⁰ And behold, I am stationed before you at Massepha, to stand before the Chaldeans who may come to us, and as for you, gather wine and summer fruit and oil, and put them in your vessels, and live in the cities that you have taken over.” ¹¹And all the Judeans, those in Moab and those among the sons of Ammon and those in Idumea and those in any other land, heard that the king of Babylon had given a remnant to Iouda and that he had appointed over them Godolias son of Achikam. ¹² And they came to Godolias to the land of Iouda at Massepha, and they gathered wine and summer fruit in great abundance.

13 And Ioanan son of Karee and all the leaders of the force, those in the open fields, came to Godolias at Massepha ¹⁴and said to him, “Do you know by knowledge that Beelias, king of the sons of Ammon, has sent to you Ismael to strike your soul?” And Godolias did not believe them. ¹⁵And Ioanan said to Godolias secretly at Massepha, “I will indeed go and strike Ismael, and let no one else know, lest he slay your soul, and all Iouda, those gathered to you, be scattered, and those remaining of Iouda shall perish.” ¹⁶And Godolias said to Ioanan, “Do not do this thing, because you are telling lies about Ismael.”

48 ^(41.1) And it happened in the seventh month, Ismael son of Nathanias son of Eleasa of the family of the king came and ten men with him to Godolias at Massepha. And they ate bread together there. ²And Ismael got up, and the ten men who were with him, and they struck Godolias, whom the king of Babylon had appointed over the land, ³and all the Judeans who were with him at Massepha and all the Chaldeans who were found there.

4 And it happened on the second day after he had struck Godolias, and no person knew, ⁵men also arrived from Sychem and from Salem and from Samaria, eighty men with their beards shaved and their clothes torn and beating themselves, and manaa^a and frankincense in their hands to bring to the house of the Lord. ⁶And Ismael came out to meet them. They were going and weeping, and he said, “Enter to Godolias.” ⁷And it happened, when they came into the middle of the city, he slaughtered them into the well. ⁸And ten men were found there, and they said to Ismael, “Do not kill us, because we have stores of wheat and barley, honey and oil in a field.” And he passed them over and did not kill them in the midst of their brothers.

9 And the well into which Ismael had thrown all whom he had struck—this is a large well that King Asa had made from before King Baasa of Israel—Ismael filled this with the slain. ¹⁰And Ismael turned away all the people who were left in Massepha, and the king’s daughters, whom the chief cook had committed to Godolias son of Achikam. And he went away beyond the sons of Ammon.

11 And Ioanan son of Karee and all the leaders of the force, those with him, heard of all the evil that Ismael had done, ¹²and they brought their whole army and went out to fight him. And they found him at a great water in Gabaon. ¹³And it happened when all the people who were with Ismael saw Ioanan and the leaders of the force that was with him, ¹⁴they then went back to Ioanan. ¹⁵ And Ismael was saved with eight people and went to the sons of Ammon. ¹⁶And Ioanan and all the leaders of the force, those with him, took all the rest of the people whom he had turned away from Ismael—mighty men in war and the women and the rest and the eunuchs, whom he brought back from Gabaon. ¹⁷And they went out and settled at Gaberoth Chamaam, which is near Bethleem, to go to Egypt ¹⁸from before the Chaldeans, because they feared before them, because Ismael had struck Godolias, whom the king of Babylon had appointed in the land.

49 ^(42.1)And all the leaders of the force and Ioanan and Azarias son of Maasaias and all the people from small even to great approached ²the prophet Ieremias and said to him, “Let mercy for us come about before you, and pray to the Lord, your God, for these that remain, because there are a few of us left out of many, as your eyes see. ³And let the Lord your God tell us the way we should go in it and the word we should do.” ⁴And Ieremias said to them, “I have heard; behold, I shall pray to the Lord, your God, according to your words, and it shall be, the word whichever the Lord will answer, I will tell you; I will not hide from you what is said.” ⁵And they in their turn said to Ieremias, “Let the Lord be among us as a just and faithful witness, if—according to every word with which the Lord sends you to us—we shall not act thus. ⁶Both if it is good and if it is bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord, our God, to him to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go better with us, because we will obey the voice of the Lord our God.”

7 And it happened after ten days a word of the Lord came to Ieremias. ⁸And he summoned Ioanan and the leaders of the force and all the people from small even to great ⁹and said to them, “Thus did the Lord say: ¹⁰If in settling you settle in this land, I will build you up and not pull down, and I will plant you and not pluck up, because I am at rest regarding the evils that I have done to you. ¹¹Do not be afraid before the king of Babylon, whom you fear before him. Do not be afraid, quoth the Lord, because I am with you, to rescue you and to save you from his hand. ¹²And I will grant you mercy, and I will have mercy on you and return you to your land. ¹³And if you keep saying, ‘We will not settle in this land,’ so as not to obey the voice of the Lord, ¹⁴‘because we will go into the land of Egypt, and we shall not see war, and we shall not hear a trumpet sound, and we shall not be hungry because of bread, and there we will live,’ ¹⁵therefore hear a word of the Lord. Thus did the Lord say: If you incline your face towards Egypt and enter to live there, ¹⁶it shall also be that the sword, which you fear before it, shall find you in Egypt, and the famine, regarding which you have a concern before it, shall seize you in Egypt, and there you shall die. ¹⁷And there shall be: all the people and all the aliens who have set their faces towards the land of Egypt to live there, they shall expire by sword and by famine, and there shall not be any of them that escapes from the evils that I am bringing upon them, ¹⁸because thus did the Lord say: Just as my anger dripped on the inhabitants of Ierousalem, so my anger will drip on you, when you go into Egypt. And you shall become untrodden and be in subjection and become a curse and a reproach, and you shall see this place no more. ¹⁹This is what the Lord has spoken to you who remain of Iouda: Do not enter into Egypt. And now in knowing you shall know ²⁰that you have acted wickedly in your souls in having sent to me, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord, and according to everything, whatever the Lord speaks to you, we will do.’ ²¹And you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord by which he sent me to you. ²²And now you shall expire by sword and by famine in the place where you desire to go to settle there.”

50 ^(43.1)And it happened, when Ieremias stopped saying to the people all the words of the Lord, with which the Lord had sent him to them—all these words—²then Azarias son of Maasaias said, and Ioanan son of Karee and all the men who had spoken to Ieremias, saying, “Lies! The Lord did not send you to us to say, ‘Do not enter into Egypt to live there,’ ³but Barouch son of Nerias is inciting you against us in order that you hand us over into the hands of the Chaldeans that they put us to death and that we be exiled to Babylon.” ⁴And Ioanan and all the leaders of the force and all the people did not obey the voice of the Lord, to settle down in the land of Iouda. ⁵And Ioanan and all the leaders of the force took all those remaining of Iouda who had returned to settle down in the land—⁶the mighty men and the women and the rest and the daughters of the king and the souls whom Nabouzardan had left with Godolias son of Achikam and the prophet Ieremias and Barouch son of Nerias. ⁷And they entered into Egypt, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord. And they entered into Taphnas.

8 And a word of the Lord came to Ieremias in Taphnas, saying: ⁹Take some large stones for yourself, and hide them in the entrance to Pharao’s house in Taphnas in the sight of the men of Iouda. ¹⁰ And you will say, Thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am sending for and will bring King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon, and he will set his throne over these stones that you have hidden, and he will raise his weapons against them^a, ¹¹and he shall enter and strike the land of Egypt, giving

those who are destined for death, to death,
and those who are destined for going into exile, to going
         into exile,

and those who are destined for the
sword, to the sword.

¹²And he shall burn a fire in the houses of their gods, and he shall set them^b on fire and exile them^a, and he shall delouse the land of Egypt, as a shepherd delouses his cloak, and he shall depart in peace. ¹³And he shall crush the pillars of Heliopolis, those in On, and their^c houses he shall burn down with fire.

51 ^(44.1)The word that came to Ieremias for all the Judeans living in Egypt, even those settled in Magdolos and in Taphnas and in the land of Pathoures, saying, ²Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say: You have seen all the evils that I have brought on Ierousalem and on the cities of Iouda. And behold, they are desolate of inhabitants ³because of their wickedness that they committed, to embitter me, by having gone to burn incense to other gods that they did not know. ⁴And I sent to you my servants the prophets early in the morning, and I sent, saying, “Do not do the thing of this defilement that I hated!” ⁵And they did not listen and did not incline their ear, to turn from their evils so as not to offer incense to other gods. ⁶And my wrath and my anger dripped, and it burned in the cities of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem, and they became a desolation and something untrodden, as this day. ⁷And now thus did the Lord Almighty say: Why are you doing great harm to your souls, to cut off your man and woman, infant and suckling, from the midst of Iouda so as not to have any one left, ⁸to embitter me with the works of your hands, to offer incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, there where you have come to live, that you be cut off and that you become a curse and reproach among the nations of the earth? ⁹ Surely, you have not forgotten the evils of your fathers and the evils of the kings of Iouda and the evils of your rulers and the evils of your wives, which they committed in the land of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem? ¹⁰And they have not stopped to this day, and they have not clung to my ordinances that I gave before their fathers.

11 Therefore thus did the Lord say: Behold, I am setting my face ¹²to destroy all those remaining who are in Egypt, and they shall fall; by sword and by famine they shall fail from small even to great, and they shall become a reproach and destruction and a curse. ¹³And I will visit upon those who are settled in Egypt, as I have visited upon Ierousalem, with sword and with famine, ¹⁴and none of those remaining of Iouda who sojourn in the land of Egypt shall be saved to return to the land of Iouda, there to which they hope in their souls to return; they shall not go back, except as escapees.

15 And all the men, who were aware that their wives were offering incense to other gods, and all the women, a great gathering, and all the people who settled in Pathoures in the land of Egypt answered Ieremias, saying: ¹⁶“As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to hear you, ¹⁷because in doing we will do every word that shall come out of our mouth, to offer incense to the queen of the sky and to pour out libations to her, just as we and our fathers and our kings and our rulers did in the cities of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem. And we were filled with bread, and we were well-off and saw no evil. ¹⁸But when we left off offering incense to the queen of the sky, we all were diminished and have failed by sword and by famine. ¹⁹And because we were offering incense to the queen of the sky and poured out libations to her—surely, we did not make cakes for her and poured out libations to her without our husbands?”

20 And Ieremias said to all the people, the mighty men and the women and all the people who answered him words, saying: ²¹“As for the incense offering that you offered in the cities of Iouda and outside of Ierousalem, you and your fathers and your kings and your rulers and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember it, and did it not come up in his heart? ²²And the Lord could no longer bear up before the evil of your deeds, before the abominations that you committed, and your land became a desolation and something untrodden and a curse, as this day. ²³Because you were burning incense and because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not walk by his ordinances and by his law and by his testimonies, these evils have also taken hold of you.”

24 And Ieremias said to the people and the women, “Hear a word of the Lord, ²⁵Thus did the Lord, the God of Israel, say: You wives have spoken with your mouth and have accomplished with your hands, saying, ‘In enacting we will enact our agreements to which we have agreed, to burn incense to the queen of the sky and to pour out libations to her.’ In respecting you respected your agreements, and in enacting you enacted! ²⁶Therefore hear a word of the Lord, all Iouda who settled in the land of Egypt: Behold, I swore by my great name, said the Lord, if my name shall ever be in the mouth of all Iouda in all the land of Egypt to say, ‘The Lord lives!’—²⁷because, behold, I am watchful over them to harm them and not to do good, and all Iouda, those who live in the land of Egypt, shall fail by sword and by famine until they expire. ²⁸And those who have escaped from the sword shall return to the land of Iouda, few in number, and those remaining of Iouda, who are established in the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose word will endure! ²⁹And this shall be the sign that I am going to visit upon you for evil: ³⁰Thus did the Lord say, Behold, I am giving Ouaphre, king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemy and into the hands of people that seek his soul, just as I gave King Sedekias of Iouda into the hands of King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon, his enemy and one who sought his soul.”

31(45.1) The word that the prophet Ieremias spoke to Barouch son of Nerias, when he would write these words in a book from the mouth of Ieremias, in the fourth year of Ioakim son of King Iosias of Iouda: ³²⁽²⁾Thus did the Lord say with reference to you, O Barouch: ³³⁽³⁾Because you said, “Woe is me! Woe is me! because the Lord has added sorrow to my pain, I slept in groaning, and I found no rest.” ³⁴⁽⁴⁾Say to him, “Thus did the Lord say: Behold, I bring down whom I have built up and pluck up whom I planted. ³⁵⁽⁵⁾And you will seek great things for yourself. Do not seek them because, behold, I am bringing evil upon all flesh, says the Lord, but I will give your soul as a windfall in every place, there where you may go.”

52 It being Sedekias’ twenty-first year when he began to reign—and he reigned eleven years in Ierousalem, and his mother’s name was Hamital daughter of Ieremias from Lobena.

4 And it happened in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, King Nabouchodonosor of Babylon came with all his force against Ierousalem, and they blockaded it and walled it in on four sides, all around. ⁵And the city came under siege until the eleventh year of King Sedekias. ⁶On the ninth of the month also the famine took a firm hold in the city, and there were no loaves for the people of the land. ⁷And the city was breached, and all the men of war went out by night by the way of the gate between the wall and the outer wall, which was by the king’s garden, and the Chaldeans were at the city, all around. And they went in the direction of Araba. ⁸And the force of the Chaldeans pursued after the king and overtook him across from Iericho, and all his servants were scattered from him. ⁹ And they captured the king and brought him to the king of Babylon at Deblatha, and he spoke to him in judgment. ¹⁰And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Sedekias before his eyes, and he slew all the rulers of Iouda at Deblatha. ¹¹And he blinded the eyes of Sedekias and bound him in fetters, and the king of Babylon brought him to Babylon and delivered him to the mill house until the day he died.

12 And in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, Nabouzardan the chief cook, who stood before the king of Babylon, came to Ierousalem. ¹³And he set on fire the house of the Lord and the house of the king and all the houses of the city, and every great house he set on fire with fire. ¹⁴ And the force of the Chaldeans, which was with the chief cook, pulled down every wall around Ierousalem. ¹⁶And the chief cook left a residue of the people to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil.

17 And the pillars of bronze that were in the house of the Lord and the bases and the bronze sea that was in the house of the Lord, the Chaldeans broke in pieces and took their bronze and carried it off to Babylon. ¹⁸And the rim and the saucers and the meat hooks and all the bronze vessels with them with which they were ministering. ¹⁹And the chief cook took away the saphphoth^a and the masmaroth^b and the pitchers and the lampstands and the censers and the ladles, which were ^cgold gold^c and which were ^dsilver silver^d. ²⁰And as for the two pillars and the one sea and the twelve bronze bull calves under the sea, which things King Salomon had made for the house of the Lord, there was no weighing of their bronze. ²¹And as for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was thirty-five cubits, and a cord of twelve cubits encompassed it, and its thickness was four fingers all round. ²²And upon them was a bronze cornice, and the excess of the one cornice was five cubits in length, and lattice-work and pomegranates were on the cornice all round; all was of bronze. And the second pillar had the same, with eight pomegranates to a cubit for the twelve cubits. ²³And there were ninety-six pomegranates on the one side, and all the pomegranates on the latticework were one hundred, all around.

24 And the chief cook took the first priest and the priest ranked second and the three that were guarding the threshold^{e 25}and one eunuch, who was overseer of the men of war, and seven men of name in the presence of the king, who were found in the city, and the recorder of the forces, who was recording for the people of the land, and sixty persons of the people of the land, who were found in the midst of the city. ²⁶And Nabouzardan the chief cook took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Deblatha. ²⁷And the king of Babylon struck them at Deblatha in the land of Hemath.

31 And it happened in the thirty-seventh year after King Ioakim of Iouda had been exiled, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fourth of the month, King Oulaimaradach of Babylon, in the year in which he became king, received the head of King Ioakim of Iouda and brought him out the house where he was being guarded, ³²and he spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat above the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. ³³And he exchanged his prison robe, and he would always eat bread in his presence all the days he lived. ³⁴For the allowance was given him always by the king of Babylon, from day to day, until the day he died.