Study Desk

The prophets will bear the guilt for their sins — the sin of the prophet will be the same as the sin of the inquirer —

For here is what Adonai Elohim says: "Even if I inflict my four dreadful judgments on Yerushalayim — sword, famine, wild animals and plagues — to eliminate both its humans and its animals;

So now it is thrown in the fire as fuel, the fire consumes both ends of it, and the middle of it is singed — is it useful now for making something?

When it was whole, it was good for nothing; so how much less, when the fire has consumed it, and it is singed, will it be useful for making something!

As for your birth — on the day you were born nobody cut your umbilical cord, washed you in water to clean you off, rubbed salt on you or wrapped you in cloth.

No one seeing you had enough pity on you to do any of these things for you — no one had any compassion on you. Instead, you were thrown into an open field in your own filth on the day you were born.

"‘Again I passed by you, looked at you and saw that your time had come, the time for love. So I spread my cloak over you to cover your private parts and entered into a covenant with you,' says Adonai Elohim , ‘and you became mine.

I gave you jewelry to wear, bracelets for your hands, a necklace for your neck,

a ring for your nose, earrings for your ears and a beautiful crown for your head.

You took your clothes and used them to decorate with bright colors the high places you made for yourself, and there you continued prostituting yourself. Such things shouldn't happen, and in the future they won't.

You also took your beautiful jewels made of my gold and my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images, with which you continued to prostitute yourself.

"‘Moreover, your sons and daughters, whom you bore me, you took and sacrificed for them to devour. Were these fornications of yours a casual matter? —

killing my children, handing them over and setting them apart for [these idols]?

You built your high places at every streetcorner, turning your beauty into an abomination, spreading your legs for every passer-by, and multiplying your acts of fornication.

I will pronounce on you the sentence that applies to women who commit adultery and murder; I will bring on you the death [decreed for] furious jealousy.

They will burn your houses to the ground and execute judgments against you in the presence of many women. I will make you stop fornicating, and you will never again pay for a lover.

But you too must bear your disgrace; for by your passing judgment that your sisters were innocent, through your having committed sins worse than theirs, they are shown to be more righteous than you. So be ashamed, and bear the disgrace you deserve for making your [guilty] sisters seem innocent!

so that you can bear your own shame and experience the disgrace you deserve for all you have done to shield them from feeling their own guilt.

"For here is what Adonai Elohim says: ‘I will do to you as you have done — you treated the oath with contempt by breaking the covenant.

I will spread my net over him, and he will be caught in my snare; I will bring him to Bavel and bring him to judgment there for breaking faith with me.