Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 5
Chapter 5 of Jeremiah
look and take note!
Search her squares to see
if you can find a man,
one who does justice
and seeks truth;
that I may pardon her.
yet they swear falsely.
Thou hast smitten them,
but they felt no anguish;
thou hast consumed them,
but they refused to take correction.
They have made their faces harder than rock;
they have refused to repent.
they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the LORD,
the law of their God.
and will speak to them;
for they know the way of the LORD,
the law of their God.”
But they all alike had broken the yoke,
they had burst the bonds.
a wolf from the desert shall destroy them.
A leopard is watching against their cities,
every one who goes out of them shall be torn in pieces;
because their transgressions are many,
their apostasies are great.
Your children have forsaken me,
and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
they committed adultery
and trooped to the houses of harlots.
each neighing for his neighbor’s wife.
says the LORD;
and shall I not avenge myself
on a nation such as this?
but make not a full end;
strip away her branches,
for they are not the LORD’s.
have been utterly faithless to me,
says the LORD.
and have said, ‘He will do nothing;
no evil will come upon us,
nor shall we see sword or famine.
the word is not in them.
Thus shall it be done to them!’”
“Because they[a] have spoken this word,
behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire,
and this people wood, and the fire shall devour them.
a nation from afar, O house of Israel,
says the LORD.
It is an enduring nation,
it is an ancient nation,
a nation whose language you do not know,
nor can you understand what they say.
they are all mighty men.
they shall eat up your sons and your daughters;
they shall eat up your flocks and your herds;
they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees;
your fortified cities in which you trust
they shall destroy with the sword.”
proclaim it in Judah:
who have eyes, but see not,
who have ears, but hear not.
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the bound for the sea,
a perpetual barrier which it cannot pass;
though the waves toss, they cannot prevail,
though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
they have turned aside and gone away.
‘Let us fear the LORD our God,
who gives the rain in its season,
the autumn rain and the spring rain,
and keeps for us
the weeks appointed for the harvest.’
and your sins have kept good from you.
they lurk like fowlers lying in wait.[b]
They set a trap;
they catch men.
their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich,
They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness;
they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
says the LORD,
and shall I not avenge myself
on a nation such as this?”
has happened in the land:
and the priests rule at their direction;
my people love to have it so,
but what will you do when the end comes?FOOTNOTES
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