Jeremiah 14
14
Time and Again We’ve Betrayed God
1-6 God’s Message that came to Jeremiah regarding the drought:
“Judah weeps,
her cities mourn.
The people fall to the ground, moaning,
while sounds of Jerusalem’s sobs rise up, up.
The rich people sent their servants for water.
They went to the cisterns, but the cisterns were dry.
They came back with empty buckets,
wringing their hands, shaking their heads.
All the farm work has stopped.
Not a drop of rain has fallen.
The farmers don’t know what to do.
They wring their hands, they shake their heads.
Even the doe abandons her fawn in the field
because there is no grass—
Eyes glazed over, on her last legs,
nothing but skin and bones.”
7-9We know we’re guilty. We’ve lived bad lives—
but do something, God. Do it for your sake!
Time and time again we’ve betrayed you.
No doubt about it—we’ve sinned against you.
Hope of Israel! Our only hope!
Israel’s last chance in this trouble!
Why are you acting like a tourist,
taking in the sights, here today and gone tomorrow?
Why do you just stand there and stare,
like someone who doesn’t know what to do in a crisis?
But God, you are, in fact, here, here with us!
You know who we are—you named us!
Don’t leave us without a leg to stand on.
10Then God said of these people:
“Since they loved to wander this way and that,
never giving a thought to where they were going,
I will now have nothing more to do with them—
except to note their guilt and punish their sins.”
The Killing Fields
11-12 God said to me, “Don’t pray that everything will turn out all right for this people. When they skip their meals in order to pray, I won’t listen to a thing they say. When they redouble their prayers, bringing all kinds of offerings from their herds and crops, I’ll not accept them. I’m finishing them off with war and famine and disease.”
13I said, “But Master, God! Their preachers have been telling them that everything is going to be all right—no war and no famine—that there’s nothing to worry about.”
14Then God said, “These preachers are liars, and they use my name to cover their lies. I never sent them, I never commanded them, and I don’t talk with them. The sermons they’ve been handing out are sheer illusion, tissues of lies, whistlings in the dark.
15-16“So this is my verdict on them: All the preachers who preach using my name as their text, preachers I never sent in the first place, preachers who say, ‘War and famine will never come here’—these preachers will die in war and by starvation. And the people to whom they’ve been preaching will end up as corpses, victims of war and starvation, thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem unburied—no funerals for them or their wives or their children! I’ll make sure they get the full brunt of all their evil.
17-18“And you, Jeremiah, will say this to them:
“‘My eyes pour out tears.
Day and night, the tears never quit.
My dear, dear people are battered and bruised,
hopelessly and cruelly wounded.
I walk out into the fields,
shocked by the killing fields strewn with corpses.
I walk into the city,
shocked by the sight of starving bodies.
And I watch the preachers and priests
going about their business as if nothing’s happened!’”
19-22God, have you said your final No to Judah?
Can you simply not stand Zion any longer?
If not, why have you treated us like this,
beaten us nearly to death?
We hoped for peace—
nothing good came from it;
We looked for healing—
and got kicked in the stomach.
We admit, O God, how badly we’ve lived,
and our ancestors, how bad they were.
We’ve sinned, they’ve sinned,
we’ve all sinned against you!
Your reputation is at stake! Don’t quit on us!
Don’t walk out and abandon your glorious Temple!
Remember your covenant.
Don’t break faith with us!
Can the no-gods of the godless nations cause rain?
Can the sky water the earth by itself?
You’re the one, O God, who does this.
So you’re the one for whom we wait.
You made it all,
you do it all.
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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) 14
14
1The word of the Lord that came to Jeremias, concerning the words of the drought.
2Judea hath mourned, and the gates thereof are fallen and are become obscure on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.
3The great ones sent their inferiors to the water: they came to draw, they found no water, they carried back their vessels empty: they were confounded and afflicted, and covered their heads.
4For the destruction of the land, because there came no rain upon the earth, the husbandmen were confounded: they covered their heads.
5Yea, the hind also brought forth in the field, and left it, because there was no grass.
6And the wild asses stood upon the rocks, they snuffed up the wind like dragons: their eyes failed, because there was no grass.
7If our iniquities have testified against us, O Lord, do thou it for thy name's sake, for our rebellions are many: we have sinned against thee.
8O expectation of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble: Why wilt thou be a stranger in the land and as a wayfaring man turning in to lodge?
9Why wilt thou be as a wandering man, as a mighty man that cannot save? But thou, O Lord, art among us, and thy name is called upon by us: forsake us not.
10Thus saith the Lord to his people that have loved to move their feet and have not rested and have not pleased the Lord: He will now remember their iniquities and visit their sins.
11And the Lord said to me: Pray not for this people for their good.
12When they fast, I will not hear their prayers: and if they offer holocausts and victims, I will not receive them: for I will consume them by the sword and by famine and by the pestilence.
13And I said: Ah, ah, ah, O Lord God, the prophets say to them: You shall not see the sword, and there shall be no famine among you, but he will give you true peace in this place.
14And the Lord said to me: The prophets prophesy falsely in my name. I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, nor have I spoken to them: they prophesy unto you a lying vision and divination and deceit and the seduction of their own heart.
15Therefore, thus saith the Lord, concerning the prophets that prophecy in my name, whom I did not send, that say: Sword and famine shall not be in this land. By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed.
16And the people to whom they prophecy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword, and there shall be none to bury them, they and their wives, their sons and their daughters. And I will pour out their wickedness upon them.
17And thou shalt speak this word to them: Let my eyes shed down tears night and day and let them not cease, because the virgin daughter of my people is afflicted with a great affliction, with an exceeding grievous evil.
18If I go forth into the fields behold the slain with the sword: and if I enter into the city, behold them that are consumed with famine. The prophet also and the priest are gone into a land which they knew not.
19Hast thou utterly cast away Juda, or hath thy soul abhorred Sion? Why then hast thou struck us, so that there is no healing for us? We have looked for peace, and there is no good: and for the time of healing, and, behold, trouble.
20We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, the iniquities of our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.
21Give us not to be a reproach, for thy name's sake, and do not disgrace in us the throne of thy glory. Remember, break not thy covenant with us.
22Are there any among the graven things of the Gentiles that can send rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Art not thou the Lord our God, whom we have looked for? For thou hast made all these things.
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An historical text maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society.