Jeremiah 17:5–6

⁸It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.

⁹It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.

³Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

⁴His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

²²Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

⁸With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles. And the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

¹WOE to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord!

²Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of the evildoers, and against the help of them that work iniquity.

³Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.

⁴For thus hath the Lord spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.

⁵As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.

⁶¶ Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.

⁷For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin.

⁸¶ Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited.

⁹And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem.

¹WOE to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

²That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!

³Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.

⁴For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes.

⁵They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them, nor be an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach.

⁶The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them.

⁷For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit still.

⁶Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him.

⁹Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

²¹For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

⁶And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.

⁷When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand.

⁹And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall lothe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.

²The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.

¹⁵Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.

¹⁷He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.

²³And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

⁴The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

⁶Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the wilderness.

³⁰He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.

³¹Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence.

³²It shall be accomplished before his time, and his branch shall not be green.

³³He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive.

³⁴For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.

⁶Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings.

¹¹Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?

¹²Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.

¹³So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish:

⁴⁵And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt.

⁶Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

⁷Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

⁸Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord.

⁹Therefore as I live, saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them.

¹⁹And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.

²⁰And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died.

²Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.

¹¹But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.

³⁰For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.

⁷When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever: