Jeremiah 13
13
People Who Do Only What They Want to Do
1-2 God told me, “Go and buy yourself some linen shorts. Put them on and keep them on. Don’t even take them off to wash them.” So I bought the shorts as God directed and put them on.
3-5Then God told me, “Take the shorts that you bought and go straight to Perath and hide them there in a crack in the rock.” So I did what God told me and hid them at Perath.
6-7Next, after quite a long time, God told me, “Go back to Perath and get the linen shorts I told you to hide there.” So I went back to Perath and dug them out of the place where I had hidden them. The shorts by then had rotted and were worthless.
8-11 God explained, “This is the way I am going to ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem—a wicked bunch of people who won’t obey me, who do only what they want to do, who chase after all kinds of no-gods and worship them. They’re going to turn out as rotten as these old shorts. Just as shorts clothe and protect, so I kept the whole family of Israel under my care”—God’s Decree—“so that everyone could see they were my people, a people I could show off to the world and be proud of. But they refused to do a thing I said.
12“And then tell them this, ‘God’s Message, personal from the God of Israel: Every wine jug should be full of wine.’
“And they’ll say, ‘Of course. We know that. Every wine jug should be full of wine!’
13-14“Then you’ll say, ‘This is what God says: Watch closely. I’m going to fill every person who lives in this country—the kings who rule from David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, the citizens of Jerusalem—with wine that will make them drunk. And then I’ll smash them, smash the wine-filled jugs—old and young alike. Nothing will stop me. Not an ounce of pity or mercy or compassion will slow me down. Every last drunken jug of them will be smashed!’”
The Light You Always Took for Granted
15-17Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don’t stay stuck in your ways!
It’s God’s Message we’re dealing with here.
Let your lives glow bright before God
before he turns out the lights,
Before you trip and fall
on the dark mountain paths.
The light you always took for granted will go out
and the world will turn black.
If you people won’t listen,
I’ll go off by myself and weep over you,
Weep because of your stubborn arrogance,
bitter, bitter tears,
Rivers of tears from my eyes,
because God’s sheep will end up in exile.
* * *
18-19Tell the king and the queen-mother,
“Come down off your high horses.
Your dazzling crowns
will tumble off your heads.”
The villages in the Negev will be surrounded,
everyone trapped,
And Judah dragged off to exile,
the whole country dragged to oblivion.
* * *
20-22Look, look, Jerusalem!
Look at the enemies coming out of the north!
What will become of your flocks of people,
the beautiful flocks in your care?
How are you going to feel when the people
you’ve played up to, looked up to all these years
Now look down on you? You didn’t expect this?
Surprise! The pain of a woman having a baby!
Do I hear you saying,
“What’s going on here? Why me?”
The answer’s simple: You’re guilty,
hugely guilty.
Your guilt has your life endangered,
your guilt has you writhing in pain.
23Can an African change skin?
Can a leopard get rid of its spots?
So what are the odds on you doing good,
you who are so long-practiced in evil?
24-27“I’ll blow these people away—
like wind-blown leaves.
You have it coming to you.
I’ve measured it out precisely.”
God’s Decree.
“It’s because you forgot me
and embraced the Big Lie,
that so-called god Baal.
I’m the one who will rip off your clothes,
expose and shame you before the watching world.
Your obsessions with gods, gods, and more gods,
your goddess affairs, your god-adulteries.
Gods on the hills, gods in the fields—
every time I look you’re off with another god.
O Jerusalem, what a sordid life!
Is there any hope for you!”
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Jeremiah 13: MSG
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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.
Jeremias (Jeremiah) 13
13
1Thus saith the Lord to me: Go, and get thee a linen girdle, and thou shalt put it about thy loins and shalt not put it into water.
2And I got a girdle according to the word of the Lord and put it about my loins.
3And the word of the Lord came to me the second time, saying:
4Take the girdle which thou hast got, which is about thy loins, and arise. And go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a hole of the rock.
5And I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me.
6And it came to pass after many days that the Lord said to me: Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from thence the girdle which I commanded thee to hide there.
7And I went to the Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle out of the place where I had hid it: and behold, the girdle was rotten, so that it was fit for no use.
8And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:
9Thus saith the Lord: After this manner will I make the pride of Juda and the great pride of Jerusalem to rot.
10This wicked people, that will not hear my words and that walk in the perverseness of their heart and have gone after strange gods to serve them and to adore them: and they shall be as this girdle which is fit for no use.
11For as the girdle sticketh close to the loins of a man, so have I brought close to me all of the house of Israel and all the house of Juda, saith the Lord: that they might be my people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory. But they would not hear.
12Thou shalt speak therefore to them this word: Thus saith the Lord, God of Israel: Every bottle shall be filled with wine. And they shall say to thee: Do we not know that every bottle shall be filled with wine?
13And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, and the kings of the race of David that sit upon his throne, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness.
14And I will scatter them every man from his brother, and fathers and sons in like manner, saith the Lord. I will not spare and I will not pardon: nor will I have mercy not to destroy them.
15Hear ye, and give ear: Be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken.
16Give ye glory to the Lord your God, before it be dark, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains. You shall look for light and he will turn it into the shadow of death and into darkness.
17But if you will not hear this, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride: weeping it shall weep, and my eyes shall run down the tears, because the flock of the Lord is carried away captive.
18Say to the king and to the queen: Humble yourselves, sit down: for the crown of your glory is come down from your head.
19The cities of the south are shut up, and there is none to open them: all Juda is carried away captive with an entire captivity.
20Lift up your eyes and see, you that come from the north. Where is the flock that is given thee, thy beautiful cattle?
21What wilt thou say when he shall visit thee? For thou hast taught them against thee and instructed them against thy own head. Shall not sorrows lay hold on thee, as a woman in labour?
22And if thou shalt say in thy heart: Why are these things come upon me? For the greatness of thy iniquity, thy nakedness is discovered, the soles of thy feet are defiled.
23If the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots: you may also do well when you have learned evil.
24And I will scatter them as stubble, which is carried away by the wind in the desert.
25This is thy lot and the portion of thy measure from me, saith the Lord, because thou hast forgotten me and hast trusted in falsehood.
26Wherefore, I have also bared my thighs against thy face: and thy shame hath appeared.
27I have seen thy adulteries and thy neighing, the wickedness of thy fornication and thy abominations upon the hills in the field. Woe to thee, Jerusalem! Wilt thou not be made clean after me. How long yet?
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An historical text maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society.