Jeremiah 23:11, 1, 3-10, 2, 12-20

The LORD says, “The prophets and the priests are godless; I have caught them doing evil in the Temple itself.

How terrible will be the LORD's judgement on those rulers who destroy and scatter his people!

I will gather the rest of my people from the countries where I have scattered them, and I will bring them back to their homeland. They will have many children and increase in number. I will appoint rulers to take care of them. My people will no longer be afraid or terrified, and I will not punish them again. I, the LORD, have spoken.” The LORD says, “The time is coming when I will choose as king a righteous descendant of David. That king will rule wisely and do what is right and just throughout the land. When he is king, the people of Judah will be safe, and the people of Israel will live in peace. He will be called ‘The LORD Our Salvation’. “The time is coming,” says the LORD, “when people will no longer swear by me as the living God who brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. Instead, they will swear by me as the living God who brought the people of Israel out of a northern land and out of all the other countries where I had scattered them. Then they will live in their own land.” My heart is crushed, and I am trembling. Because of the LORD, because of his holy words, I am like a man who is drunk, a man who has had too much wine. The land is full of people unfaithful to the LORD; they live wicked lives and misuse their power. Because of the LORD's curse the land mourns and the pastures are dry.

This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says about the rulers who were supposed to take care of his people: “You have not taken care of my people; you have scattered them and driven them away. Now I am going to punish you for the evil you have done.

The paths they follow will be slippery and dark; I will make them stumble and fall. I am going to bring disaster on them; the time of their punishment is coming. I, the LORD, have spoken. I have seen the sin of Samaria's prophets: they have spoken in the name of Baal and have led my people astray. But I have seen the prophets in Jerusalem do even worse: they commit adultery and tell lies; they help people to do wrong, so that no one stops doing what is evil. To me, they are all as bad as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. “So then, this is what I, the LORD Almighty, say about the prophets of Jerusalem: I will give them bitter plants to eat and poison to drink, because they have spread ungodliness throughout the land.” The LORD Almighty said to the people of Jerusalem, “Do not listen to what the prophets say; they are filling you with false hopes. They tell you what they have imagined and not what I have said. To the people who refuse to listen to what I have said, they keep saying that all will go well with them. And they tell everyone who is stubborn that disaster will never touch him.” I said, “None of these prophets has ever known the LORD's secret thoughts. None of them has ever heard or understood his message, or ever listened or paid attention to what he said. His anger is a storm, a furious wind that will rage over the heads of the wicked, and it will not end until he has done everything he intends to do. In days to come his people will understand this clearly.”