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¹⁶ Therefore pray not thou for this people, and intercede not for them to be pitied, yea, pray not, and approach me not for them: for I will not hearken unto thee. ¹⁷ Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Juda, and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ Their children gather wood, and their fathers kindle a fire, and their women knead dough, to make cakes to the host of heaven; and they have poured out drink-offerings to strange gods, that they might provoke me to anger. ¹⁹ Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves, that their faces may be ashamed? ²⁰ Therefore thus saith the Lord; Behold, my anger and wrath shall be poured out upon this place, and upon the men, and upon the cattle, and upon every tree of their field, and upon the fruits of the land; and it shall burn, and not be quenched.

²¹ Thus saith the Lord, Gather your whole-burnt-offerings with your meat-offerings, and eat flesh. ²² For I spoke not to your fathers, and commanded them not in the day wherein I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, concerning whole-burnt-offerings and sacrifice: ²³ but I commanded them this thing, saying, Hear ye my voice, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall be to me a people: and walk ye in all my ways which I shall command you, that it may be well with you. ²⁴ But they hearkened not to me, and their ear gave no heed, but they walked in the imaginations of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward; ²⁵ from the day that their fathers went forth out of the land of Egypt, even until this day. And I sent to you all my servants, the prophets, by day and early in the morning: yea, I sent them, ²⁶ but they hearkened not to me, and their ear gave no heed; and they made their neck harder than their fathers. ²⁷ Therefore thou shalt speak this word to them; ²⁸ This is the nation which has not hearkened to the voice of the Lord, nor received correction: truth has failed from their mouth.

²⁹ Cut off thine hair, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on thy lips; for the Lord has reprobated and rejected the generation that does these things. ³⁰ For the children of Juda have wrought evil before me, saith the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house on which my name is called, to defile it. ³¹ And they have built the altar of Tapheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons and their daughters with fire; which I did not command them to do, neither did I design it in my heart. ³² Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when they shall no more say, The altar of Tapheth, and the valley of the son of Ennom, but, The valley of the slain; and they shall bury in Tapheth, for want of room. ³³ And the dead bodies of this people shall be for food to the birds of the sky, and to the wild beasts of the earth; and there shall be none to drive them away. ³⁴ And I will destroy out of the cities of Juda, and the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of them that make merry, and the voice of them that rejoice, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride; for the whole land shall become a desolation.