Jeremiah 7
7
Mend Your Ways!
1The word that came to Jeremiah from Adonai, saying:
2Stand in the gate of Adonai’s house and proclaim there this word and say: “Hear the word of Adonai, all you of Judah that come through these gates to worship Adonai.
3Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Israel; mend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you live in this place.
4Do not trust in deceptive words and say ‘The Temple of Adonai, the Temple of Adonai, the Temple of Adonai!’
5“No, if you truly mend your ways and your deeds—if you are doing justice between a man and his neighbor,
6not oppressing the sojourner, orphan and widow nor shedding innocent blood in this place, nor going after other gods to your own ruin—
7then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.
8Look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are empty.
9Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and perjury, and offer incense to Baal and walk after other gods whom you have not known—
10and then come and stand before Me in this house that bears My Name, saying, ‘We are saved!’—so that you may keep doing all these abominations?
11Has this House, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Look, even I have seen it!” It is a declaration of Adonai.
12“Indeed, go now to My place that was in Shiloh, where I first made My Name dwell. Now see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel.
13While you were doing all these things,” declares Adonai, “I spoke to you early and often, but you did not listen, and I called you but you did not answer.
14Therefore I will do to the House that bears My Name—the one in which you trust, the one that I gave to you and to your fathers—as I have done to Shiloh.
15And I will cast you out of My sight, just as I cast out all your brothers, all the offspring of Ephraim.
16“As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not offer any supplication or petition for them, nor entreat Me, because I will not hear you.
17Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
18The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire and the women knead the dough to make sacrificial cakes to the queen of heaven. Moreover, they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to provoke Me to anger.
19But am I the One they are provoking?” declares Adonai. “Are they not vexing themselves to their own shame?”
20Therefore thus says Adonai Elohim: “My anger and My wrath is about to be poured out on this place—on man and beast, and on the trees of the field and the fruit of the land—and it will burn and not be quenched.”
21Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat!
22For on the day that I brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt I did not speak to them nor did I command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices,
23but I explicitly commanded them: ‘Obey My voice and I will be your God to you and you will be My people. Walk in all the ways that I command you that it may go well with you.’
24But they did not listen or pay attention. Instead they followed their own counsel, in the stubbornness of their evil heart. They have gone backward and not forward,
25from the day your fathers left the land of Egypt until today. Although I sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily and persistently,
26they did not listen to Me or pay attention. Rather, they stiffened their neck, doing more evil than their fathers.
27“When you tell them all these things, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you.
28So you will say to them, ‘This nation has not obeyed the voice of Adonai their God or received correction. Truth has perished and is cut off from their mouth.
29Cut off your hair and throw it away and take up a lamentation on the barren hills. For Adonai has spurned and cast off the generation of His wrath.”
Valley of Slaughter
30“The children of Judah have done what is evil in My sight”—it is a declaration of Adonai—“They have set their detestable things in the House that bears My Name to defile it.
31They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it even enter My mind.
32Therefore, the days are soon coming,” declares Adonai, “when it will no longer be called Topheth, nor the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. For they will bury in Topheth until there is no room.
33The carcasses of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth, and no one will frighten them away.
34Then I will bring an end, from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem, to the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land will be desolate.”
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Jeremiah 7: TLV
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Copyright © 2014 - Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society
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.