Jeremiah 5:25–31

²But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

³⁴A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.

¹⁷Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.

²³And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

²⁴The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

¹⁷Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee by the way?

¹⁸And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?

¹⁹Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.

³Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.

³⁹Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?

²²¶ The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins.

¹¹If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:

⁵They encourage themselves in an evil matter: they commune of laying snares privily; they say, Who shall see them?

²Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations.

³Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord God, The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself.

⁴Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries.

⁵Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, which art infamous and much vexed.

⁶Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood.

⁷In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.

⁸Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths.

⁹In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness.

¹⁰In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution.

¹¹And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour’s wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father’s daughter.

¹²In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.

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.

⁹He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.

¹⁰He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones.

¹⁰And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night.

¹¹Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning: and Michal David’s wife told him, saying, If thou save not thy life to night, to morrow thou shalt be slain.

¹⁴And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?

¹⁵They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.

¹CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

²²For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.

¹⁰And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.

¹⁷Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

¹⁸And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.

⁴¶ Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,

⁵Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?

⁶That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?

⁹¶ Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil!

¹⁰Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul.

¹¹For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.

⁷¶ He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress.

⁸And Ephraim said, Yet I am become rich, I have found me out substance: in all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin.

⁶Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the Lord.

¹²For the inhabitant of Maroth waited carefully for good: but evil came down from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem.

¹¹If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause:

¹²Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:

¹³We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:

²And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

¹⁰¶ Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?

¹¹Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?

²³Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

¹⁵¶ But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

⁶If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

¹²Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.

¹⁰And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.

¹IT is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.

¹HEAR this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

⁴⁷Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

⁴⁸As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

⁴⁹Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

⁵⁰And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

⁵¹Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters in all thine abominations which thou hast done.

⁵²Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters.

⁶And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her: for they have refused my judgments and my statutes, they have not walked in them.

⁷Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you;

⁴Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

⁵Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

¹RIGHTEOUS art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?

³³Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.

¹⁵Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar? did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well with him?

¹⁶He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the Lord.

¹⁷But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.

¹⁸Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory!

¹⁹He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

⁶The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.

²⁷Because he covereth his face with his fatness, and maketh collops of fat on his flanks.

²⁸And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.

²³One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

²⁴His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow.

¹²Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.

¹³The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

¹⁴I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.

⁷⁰Their heart is as fat as grease; but I delight in thy law.

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

⁶Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.

⁷Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.

²How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

³Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

⁴Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

⁹Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

⁵And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.

⁴Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

⁹¶ Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

¹⁰I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel: there is the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.

¹⁴I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

²Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.

¹²Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.

⁶They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.

¹⁴Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.

¹¹If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people.

⁹Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

¹⁰And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

¹¹And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

³For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

⁴And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

¹³For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

¹⁴And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

¹⁵Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

¹BUT there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

²And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

²⁹O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

¹⁴Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it.

³And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?

¹⁹And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

²⁰For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

²¹But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

²Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger come upon you.

³Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.

⁶And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape?

¹⁰Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:

¹¹Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.

¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?

²²The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness.

²³O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!

²⁵I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.

²⁶How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart;

³⁰And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life.

³¹For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.

⁹Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O Lord, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself.

¹⁴Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.

¹⁵¶ Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

¹⁶Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

¹⁷Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

⁶Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy: they shall not prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame.

¹¹The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.