Jeremiah - The Old Testament

¹ 'The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen, engraved with a diamond point on the tablet of the heart and on the horns of their altars,

² while their children remember their altars and their sacred pole beside the green trees, on the lofty hills.

³ My mountain on the plain, your wealth and all your treasures I shall hand over to be plundered, because of the sin of your high places throughout your territory.

⁴ You will have to relinquish your heritage which I gave you; I will enslave you to your enemies in a country which you do not know, for my fiery anger kindled by you will burn for ever.'

⁵ Yahweh says this, 'Accursed be anyone who trusts in human beings, who relies on human strength and whose heart turns from Yahweh.

⁶ Such a person is like scrub in the wastelands: when good comes, it does not affect him since he lives in the parched places of the desert, uninhabited, salt land.

⁷ 'Blessed is anyone who trusts in Yahweh, with Yahweh to rely on.

⁸ Such a person is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it has nothing to fear, its foliage stays green; untroubled in a year of drought, it never stops bearing fruit.

⁹ 'The heart is more devious than any other thing, and is depraved; who can pierce its secrets?

¹⁰ I, Yahweh, search the heart, test the motives, to give each person what his conduct and his actions deserve.

¹¹ 'The partridge will hatch eggs it has not laid. No different is the person who gets riches unjustly: his days half done, they will desert him and he prove a fool after all.'

¹² A glorious throne, sublime from the beginning, such is our Holy Place.

¹³ Yahweh, hope of Israel, all who abandon you will be put to shame, those who turn from you will be registered in the underworld, since they have abandoned Yahweh, the fountain of living water.

¹⁴ Heal me, Yahweh, and I shall be healed, save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.

¹⁵ Look, they keep saying to me, 'Where is Yahweh's word? Let it come true then!'

¹⁶ Yet I have never urged you to send disaster, I never desired the fatal day, this you know; what came from my lips was not concealed from you.

¹⁷ Do not be a terror to me, you, my refuge in time of disaster.

¹⁸ Let my persecutors be confounded, not me, let them, not me, be terrified. On them bring the day of disaster, destroy them, destroy them twice over!

¹⁹ Yahweh said this to me, 'Go and stand at the Gate of the Sons of the People by which the kings of Judah go in and out -- and at all the gates of Jerusalem.

²⁰ Say to them, "Listen to the word of Yahweh, you kings of Judah, all you people of Judah too, and all you inhabitants of Jerusalem who pass through the gates.

²¹ Yahweh says this: As you value your lives, on no account carry a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in through the gates of Jerusalem.

²² Bring no burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, and do no work. Keep the Sabbath day holy, as I ordered your ancestors.

²³ They would not hear, would not pay attention; they deliberately refused to listen or accept instruction.

²⁴ But if you listen carefully to me, Yahweh declares, and bring no burden in through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, if you keep the Sabbath holy and do no work on that day,

²⁵ then, through the gates of this city, kings and princes occupying the throne of David will continue to make their entry, riding in chariots or on horseback, they, their chief men, the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city will be inhabited for ever.

²⁶ They will come from the towns of Judah, from the districts round Jerusalem, from the territory of Benjamin, from the lowlands, from the highlands, from the Negeb, to offer burnt offering and sacrifice, and cereal offering and incense, to offer thanksgiving sacrifices in the Temple of Yahweh.

²⁷ But if you do not listen to me to keep the Sabbath day holy, and to refrain from entering the gates of Jerusalem with burdens on the Sabbath day, then I shall set fire to its gates; fire will devour the palaces of Jerusalem and not be quenched." '