Jeremiah 20:11–16

¹⁹And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee.

⁸Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

²⁰And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

¹⁰¶ Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

¹⁸Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

¹⁴Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil.

¹⁰Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly.

²⁶Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me.

⁴⁰And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

³¹What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

¹⁷Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

¹⁶They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols.

⁵Come and see the works of God: he is terrible in his doing toward the children of men.

³⁵To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

³⁶For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.

¹THE Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

²When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

²And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

²For the Lord most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.

⁵By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea:

¹⁴Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

⁴Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?

⁵They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.

⁶As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.

²⁰But, O Lord of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I revealed my cause.

⁸Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah.

⁷For he hath delivered me out of all trouble: and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.

¹⁰I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

¹⁰The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies.

²³Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

²Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.

³For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.

⁹Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.

¹⁴¶ And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.

¹⁸Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

¹⁹Give heed to me, O Lord, and hearken to the voice of them that contend with me.

²⁰Shall evil be recompensed for good? for they have digged a pit for my soul. Remember that I stood before thee to speak good for them, and to turn away thy wrath from them.

²¹Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.

²²Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.

²³Yet, Lord, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me: forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine anger.

⁵The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

³Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.

²³Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

¹⁹Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

¹⁵And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.

²²Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it.

¹⁴Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.

⁸Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it.

⁶Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

⁷When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

⁸Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

⁹Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

¹⁰Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

¹¹Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

¹²Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

¹³Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

¹⁴Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

¹⁵Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

¹⁶Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

¹⁷As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

¹⁸As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

¹⁹Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

²⁰Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

⁴Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.

²⁰Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.

²For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

³And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.

²³And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

¹⁰And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

⁴For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.

³³For the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.

⁹And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord: it shall rejoice in his salvation.

¹⁰All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him?

¹¹False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.

⁶This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

⁴He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

⁵Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?

⁶But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

³⁰I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

³¹For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

¹⁰¶ Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.

³Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.

⁴Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

⁵Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

⁸Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.

⁹Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:

¹⁰Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

¹¹Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

¹²Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

¹³For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

¹⁴With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

¹⁵Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

⁵And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

⁶¶ And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

⁵Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

¹⁴And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.

²²Let a cry be heard from their houses, when thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them: for they have digged a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet.

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:

³A voice of crying shall be from Horonaim, spoiling and great destruction.

⁴Moab is destroyed; her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.

⁶And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

¹⁴But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind:

²But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth: and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet:

¹¹I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

²²At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to appoint captains, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to appoint battering rams against the gates, to cast a mount, and to build a fort.

²⁴Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

²⁵And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

¹⁴Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.

⁸How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.

⁸If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.

¹³Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.

¹⁹¶ My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

⁴And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

⁹Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

¹⁰¶ And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

²And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

⁷Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

²⁹But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

¹⁶A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.

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.