Jeremiah 7
7
False Trust in the Temple
1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2“Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord#Jr 26:2 and there call out this word: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the Lord.
3“‘This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your actions,#Jr 4:18; 18:11; 26:13 and I will allow you to live in this place. 4Do not trust deceitful words, chanting, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” 5Instead, if you really correct your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another,#7:5 Lit justly between a man and his neighbor#Jr 22:3 6if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow#Dt 19:10,13; 21:8–9; 2Kg 21:16; 24:4; Jr 22:3,17; 26:15; Mt 27:4 and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves, 7I will allow you to live in this place, the land I gave to your ancestors#Gn 12:7; Jos 1:2; Jr 30:3 long ago and forever. 8But look, you keep trusting in deceitful words that cannot help.
9“‘Do you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known?#Ex 20:3–17; Lv 19:11–12; Dt 5:7–21; Ezk 18:5–9,14–18; 22:6–12; Hs 4:2 10Then do you come and stand before me in this house#Jr 32:34 that bears my name and say, “We are rescued, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts”? 11Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers#Is 56:7; Mt 21:13; Mk 11:17; Lk 19:46 in your view? Yes, I too have seen it.#Ps 33:13–15; Ezk 8:12; Am 9:1–4
This is the Lord’s declaration.
Shiloh as a Warning
12“‘But return to my place that was at Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first.#Dt 12:11; 14:23; 16:6,11 See what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13Now, because you have done all these things — this is the Lord’s declaration — and because I have spoken to you time and time again#7:13 Lit you rising early and speaking but you wouldn’t listen,#Jr 7:25; 11:7; 25:3; 26:5; 29:19; 32:33; 35:14–15; 44:4 and I have called to you, but you wouldn’t answer,#Pr 1:24; Is 65:12 14what I did to Shiloh I will do to the house that bears my name,#Dt 12:5; 1Kg 9:7; Mk 13:2 the house in which you trust, the place that I gave you and your ancestors. 15I will banish you from my presence, just as I banished all of your brothers, all the descendants of Ephraim.’ #Dt 29:28; 2Kg 17
Do Not Pray for Judah
16“As for you, do not pray for these people.#Jr 11:14; 14:11–12; 15:1 Do not offer a cry or a prayer on their behalf, and do not beg me,#Gn 23:8; Ru 1:16; Jr 27:18 for I will not listen to you.#Ex 32:11–13,20–34; Jr 14:11; 15:1 17Don’t you see how they behave in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven,#7:18 = a pagan goddess#Jr 44:17–19,25 and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke me to anger. 19But are they really provoking me?” #Jb 35:6 This is the Lord’s declaration. “Isn’t it they themselves being provoked to disgrace?”
20Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: “Look, my anger — my burning wrath — is about to be poured out on this place,#Jr 42:18; Lm 4:11 on people and animals, on the tree of the field, and on the produce of the land. My wrath will burn and not be quenched.”#Nah 1:6
Obedience over Sacrifice
21This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices, and eat the meat yourselves,#Dt 12:4–28; Ps 50:13; Hs 8:13 22for when I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them#Hs 6:6 or command them concerning burnt offering and sacrifice. 23However, I did give them this command: ‘Obey me, and then I will be your God, and you will be my people. Follow every way I command you so that it may go well with you.’ #Dt 5:33 24Yet they didn’t listen or pay attention#Ps 81:11 but followed their own advice and their own stubborn, evil heart. They went backward and not forward.#Jr 15:6 25Since the day your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until today, I have sent all my servants the prophets#2Kg 9:7; 17:13; Jr 26:5; 29:19; 35:15; 44:4; Ezk 38:17; Zch 1:6 to you time and time again.#7:25 Lit you, each day rising early and sending#2Ch 36:15–16; Jr 25:4 26However, my people wouldn’t listen to me or pay attention but became obstinate;#Ex 32:9; Dt 9:6,13; 2Kg 17:14; Jr 17:23; 19:15 they did more evil than their ancestors.#1Kg 16:25; 2Kg 21:11
A Lament for Disobedient Judah
27“When you speak all these things to them, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. 28Therefore, declare to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the Lord their God and would not accept discipline. Truth#7:28 Or Faithfulness has perished — it has disappeared from their mouths. 29Cut off the hair of your sacred vow#7:29 Lit off your consecration#Nm 6:1–8 and throw it away. Raise up a dirge on the barren heights,#Jr 3:2,21 for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under his wrath.’ #Is 2:6
30“For the Judeans have done what is evil in my sight.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “They have set up their abhorrent things#Jr 4:1; 16:18; 32:34 in the house that bears my name in order to defile it.#2Kg 23:24 31They have built the high places of Topheth#7:31 Lit of the fireplace#2Kg 23:10; Jr 19:6,11–14 in Ben Hinnom Valley#7:31 A valley south of Jerusalem#Jos 15:8; Jr 19:5; 32:35 in order to burn their sons and daughters in the fire,#Lv 18:21; Dt 12:31; 2Kg 17:17,31; 2Ch 28:3; Jr 19:5; Ezk 16:21; 20:31; 23:25,37,47 a thing I did not command; I never entertained the thought.
32“Therefore, look, the days are coming”#Jr 16:14; 19:6; 23:5; 48:12; 49:2; 51:47,52 — the Lord’s declaration — “when this place will no longer be called Topheth and Ben Hinnom Valley, but Slaughter Valley.#Jr 19:6 Topheth will become a cemetery,#7:32 Lit They will bury in Topheth because there will be no other burial place. 33The corpses of these people will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the land, with no one to scare them away.#Dt 28:26; Ps 79:2; Jr 16:4; 19:7; 34:20; Ezk 29:5 34I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and gladness and the voices of the groom and the bride,#Jr 16:9; 25:10; 33:11 for the land will become a desolate waste.#Lv 26:31,33; Is 64:11; Jr 25:9,11,18; 27:17; 44:2,6,22
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Jeremiah 7: CSB
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© 2017 Holman Bible Publishers
Jeremiah 7
7
The Nation That Wouldn’t Obey God
1-2a The Message from God to Jeremiah: “Stand in the gate of God’s Temple and preach this Message.
2b-3a “Say, ‘Listen, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship God. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God, has this to say to you:
3b-7 “‘Clean up your act—the way you live, the things you do—so I can make my home with you in this place. Don’t for a minute believe the lies being spoken here—“This is God’s Temple, God’s Temple, God’s Temple!” Total nonsense! Only if you clean up your act (the way you live, the things you do), only if you do a total spring cleaning on the way you live and treat your neighbors, only if you quit exploiting the street people and orphans and widows, no longer taking advantage of innocent people on this very site and no longer destroying your souls by using this Temple as a front for other gods—only then will I move into your neighborhood. Only then will this country I gave your ancestors be my permanent home, my Temple.
8-11“‘Get smart! Your leaders are handing you a pack of lies, and you’re swallowing them! Use your heads! Do you think you can rob and murder, have sex with the neighborhood wives, tell lies nonstop, worship the local gods, and buy every novel religious commodity on the market—and then march into this Temple, set apart for my worship, and say, “We’re safe!” thinking that the place itself gives you a license to go on with all this outrageous sacrilege? A cave full of criminals! Do you think you can turn this Temple, set apart for my worship, into something like that? Well, think again. I’ve got eyes in my head. I can see what’s going on.’” God’s Decree!
12“‘Take a trip down to the place that was once in Shiloh, where I met my people in the early days. Take a look at those ruins, what I did to it because of the evil ways of my people Israel.
13-15“‘So now, because of the way you have lived and failed to listen, even though time and again I took you aside and talked seriously with you, and because you refused to change when I called you to repent, I’m going to do to this Temple, set aside for my worship, this place you think is going to keep you safe no matter what, this place I gave as a gift to your ancestors and you, the same as I did to Shiloh. And as for you, I’m going to get rid of you, the same as I got rid of those old relatives of yours around Shiloh, your fellow Israelites in that former kingdom to the north.’
16-18“And you, Jeremiah, don’t waste your time praying for this people. Don’t offer to make petitions or intercessions. Don’t bother me with them. I’m not listening. Can’t you see what they’re doing in all the villages of Judah and in the Jerusalem streets? Why, they’ve got the children gathering wood while the fathers build fires and the mothers make bread to be offered to ‘the Queen of Heaven’! And as if that weren’t bad enough, they go around pouring out libations to any other gods they come across, just to hurt me.
19“But is it me they’re hurting?” God’s Decree! “Aren’t they just hurting themselves? Exposing themselves shamefully? Making themselves ridiculous?
20“Here’s what the Master God has to say: ‘My white-hot anger is about to descend on this country and everything in it—people and animals, trees in the field and vegetables in the garden—a raging wildfire that no one can put out.’
21-23“The Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, Israel’s God: ‘Go ahead! Put your burnt offerings with all your other sacrificial offerings and make a good meal for yourselves. I sure don’t want them! When I delivered your ancestors out of Egypt, I never said anything to them about wanting burnt offerings and sacrifices as such. But I did say this, commanded this: “Obey me. Do what I say and I will be your God and you will be my people. Live the way I tell you. Do what I command so that your lives will go well.”
24-26“‘But do you think they listened? Not a word of it. They did just what they wanted to do, indulged any and every evil whim and got worse day by day. From the time your ancestors left the land of Egypt until now, I’ve supplied a steady stream of my servants the prophets, but do you think the people listened? Not once. Stubborn as mules and worse than their ancestors!’
27-28“Tell them all this, but don’t expect them to listen. Call out to them, but don’t expect an answer. Tell them, ‘You are the nation that wouldn’t obey God, that refused all discipline. Truth has disappeared. There’s not a trace of it left in your mouths.
29“‘So shave your heads.
Go bald to the hills and lament,
For God has rejected and left
this generation that has made him so angry.’
30-31“The people of Judah have lived evil lives while I’ve stood by and watched.” God’s Decree. “In deliberate insult to me, they’ve set up their obscene god-images in the very Temple that was built to honor me. They’ve constructed Topheth altars for burning babies in prominent places all through the valley of Ben-hinnom, altars for burning their sons and daughters alive in the fire—a shocking perversion of all that I am and all I command.
32-34“But soon, very soon”—God’s Decree!—“the names Topheth and Ben-hinnom will no longer be used. They’ll call the place what it is: Murder Meadow. Corpses will be stacked up in Topheth because there’s no room left to bury them! Corpses abandoned in the open air, fed on by crows and coyotes, who have the run of the place. And I’ll empty both smiles and laughter from the villages of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. No wedding songs, no holiday sounds. Dead silence.”
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.