6:22. Thus saith the Lord: Behold a people cometh from the land of the north, and a great nation shall rise up from the ends of the earth.
6:23. They shall lay hold on arrow and shield: they are cruel, and will have no mercy. Their voice shall roar like the sea: and they shall mount upon horses, prepared as men for war, against thee, O daughter of Sion.
6:24. We have heard the fame thereof, our hands grow feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, as a woman in labour.
6:25. Go not out into the fields, nor walk in the highway: for the sword of the enemy, and fear is on every side.
6:26. Gird thee with sackcloth, O daughter of my people, and sprinkle thee with ashes: make thee mourning as for an only son, a bitter lamentation, because the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us.
6:27. I have set thee for a strong trier among my people: and thou shalt know, and prove their way.
6:28. All these princes go out of the way, they walk deceitfully, they are bra.s.s and iron: they are all corrupted.
6:29. The bellows have failed, the lead is consumed in the fire, the founder hath melted in vain: for their wicked deeds are not consumed.
6:30. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord hath rejected them.
Jeremias Chapter 7
The temple of G.o.d shall not protect a sinful people, without a sincere conversion. The Lord will not receive the prayers of the prophet for them: because they are obstinate in their sins.
7:1. The word that came to Jeremias from the Lord, saying:
7:2. Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and proclaim there this word, and say: Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye men of Juda, that enter in at these gates, to adore the Lord.
7:3. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the G.o.d of Israel: Make your ways and your doings good: and I will dwell with you in this place.
7:4. Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord.
7:5. For if you will order well your ways, and your doings: if you will execute judgment between a man and his neighbour,
7:6. If you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after strange G.o.ds to your own hurt,
7:7. I will dwell with you in this place: in the land, which I gave to your fathers from the beginning and for evermore.
7:8. Behold you put your trust in lying words, which shall not profit you:
7:9. To steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer to Baalim, and to go after strange G.o.ds, which you know not.
7:10. And you have come, and stood before me in this house, in which my name is called upon, and have said: We are delivered, because we have done all these abominations.
7:11. Is this house then, in which my name hath been called upon, in your eyes become a den of robbers? I, I am he: I have seen it, saith the Lord.
7:12. Go ye to my place in Silo, where my name dwelt from the beginning: and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel:
7:13. And now, because you have done all these works, saith the Lord: and I have spoken to you rising up early, and speaking, and you have not heard: and I have called you, and you have not answered:
7:14. I will do to this house, in which my name is called upon, and in which you trust, and to the place which I have given you and your fathers, as I did to Silo.
7:15. And I will cast you away from before my face, as I have cast away all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim.
7:16. Therefore do not thou pray for this people, nor take to thee praise and supplication for them: and do not withstand me: for I will not hear thee.
7:17. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Juda, and in the streets of Jerusalem?
7:18. The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to offer libations to strange G.o.ds, and to provoke me to anger.
Queen of heaven... That is, the moon, which they worshipped under that name.
7:19. Do they provoke me to anger, saith the Lord? is it not themselves, to the confusion of their own countenance?
7:20. Therefore thus saith the Lord G.o.d: Behold my wrath and my indignation is enkindled against this place, upon men and upon beasts, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruits of the land, and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
7:21. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the G.o.d of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat ye the flesh.
7:22. For I spoke not to your fathers, and I commanded them not, in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning the matter of burnt offerings and sacrifices.
I commanded them not... Viz., such sacrifices as the Jews at this time offered, without obedience; which was the thing princ.i.p.ally commanded: so that in comparison with it, the offering of the holocausts and sacrifices was of small account.
7:23. But this thing I commanded them, saying: Hearken to my voice, and I will be your G.o.d, and you shall be my people: and walk ye in all the way that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.
7:24. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear: but walked in their own will, and in the perversity of their wicked heart: and went backward and not forward,
7:25. From the day that their fathers came out of the land of Egypt, even to this day. And I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, from day to day, rising up early and sending.
7:26. And they have not hearkened to me: nor inclined their ear: but have hardened their neck, and have done worse than their fathers.
7:27. And thou shalt speak to them all these words, but they will not hearken to thee: and thou shalt call them, but they will not answer thee.
7:28. And thou shalt say to them: This is a nation which hath not hearkened to the voice of the Lord their G.o.d, nor received instruction: faith is lost, and is taken away out of their mouth.
7:29. Cut off thy hair, and cast it away: and take up a lamentation on high: for the Lord hath rejected, and forsaken the generation of his wrath,
7:30. Because the children of Juda have done evil in my eyes, saith the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house in which my name is called upon, to pollute it;
7:31. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons, and their daughters in the fire: which I commanded not, nor thought on in my heart.
7:32. Therefore behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and it shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom: but the valley of slaughter: and they shall bury in Topheth, because there is no place.
7:33. And the carca.s.ses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to drive them away.
7:34. And I will cause to cease out of the cities of Juda, and out of the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate.
Jeremias Chapter 8
Other evils that shall fall upon the Jews for their impenitence.
8:1. At that time, saith the Lord, they shall cast out the bones of the kings of Juda, and the bones of the princes thereof, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves.