Jeremiah 9:1-22 ▼

1 Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

2 Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place for travelers, that I might leave my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous ones.

3 “And they bend their tongues like their bow in deception, and they are not mighty for the truth on the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me!” A declaration of YHWH.

4 “Let each man take heed of his neighbor, and in any brother not trust. For every brother does utterly supplant, and every neighbor walks in slander.

5 And each man will deceive his neighbor, and they will not speak the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak deception, and they weary themselves to commit iniquity.

6 You dwell in the midst of deceit, for in deceit they refuse to know Me!” A declaration of YHWH.

7 Therefore thus says YHWH of Hosts: “Behold, I am refining them, and I will test them! For how shall I act before the face of the daughter of My people?

8 Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow, speaking deceit; with his mouth he speaks peace to his neighbor, and within himself he sets an ambush.

9 Shall I not visit them for these things? A declaration of YHWH. On a nation such as this shall not My soul avenge itself?”

10 Over the mountains I will take up weeping and wailing, and over the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up without man passing through, and they do not hear the voice of the cattle; from the birds of the heavens even to the beast they have fled; they have gone away.

11 “And I will make Jerusalem into heaps, a dwelling for jackals; and the cities of Judah I will make a desolation, without inhabitant.”

12 Who is the wise man that he may understand this? And to whom has the mouth of YHWH spoken, that he may declare it? Because of what has the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, without one passing through?

13 And YHWH said: “Because they have forsaken My law that I had set before their face, and they have not listened to My voice and have not walked by it.

14 And they have walked after the stubborness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.

15 Therefore thus says YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will feed them—this people—with wormwood, and give them to drink water of gall!

16 And I will scatter them among the nations that have known, neither they nor their fathers, and I will send out after them a sword, until I have put an end to them!

17 Thus says YHWH of Hosts: “Consider, and call for the wailing women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they may come!

18 And let them hurry and take up for us a lament, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.

19 For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! We are exceedingly ashamed, because we have left behind the land, because they have thrown down our dwellings!’”

20 Now hear, O women, the word of YHWH, and let your? ear receive the word of His mouth! And teach your? daughters a lamentation, and each woman her neighbor a dirge!

21 For death has come up into our windows; it enters into our fortresses, to cut off the child from outside, the young men from the squares.

22 Speak thus: A declaration of YHWH—“The corpse of a man will fall like dung upon the face of the field, and like sheaves behind the reaper, and there shall be no one gathering!”