Study Desk

How long is the land to mournAnd the plants of every field to dry up?Because of the evil of those who inhabit it,Animals and birds have been swept away,Because men have said, "He will not see our latter ending."

If you say in your heart,‘Why have these things happened to me?'Because of the magnitude of your iniquityYour skirts have been uncoveredAnd your heels have suffered violence.

This is your lot, the portion measured to youFrom Me," declares Yahweh,"Because you have forgotten MeAnd trusted in lies.

Because the ground is dismayed,For there has been no rain on the land,The farmers have been put to shame;They have covered their heads.

The people also to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and there will be no one to bury them—neither them, nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters—for I will pour out their own evil on them.

I will give them over to be an example of terror among all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.

Then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your fathers have forsaken Me,' declares Yahweh, ‘and have walked after other gods and served them and worshiped them; but Me they have forsaken and have not kept My law.

I will first doubly repay their iniquity and their sin because they have profaned My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable idols and with their abominations."

Because they have forsaken Me and have made this a foreign place and have burned incense in it to other gods, that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent

I will also make this city an object of horror and of hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and hiss because of all its slaughtering.

and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts, "Just so will I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot again be repaired; and they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place for burial.

And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place Topheth because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned incense to all the heavenly host and poured out drink offerings to other gods."'"

"Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have spoken against it because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear My words.'"

But Yahweh is with me like a ruthless mighty one;Therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.They will be utterly ashamed, because they have not prospered,With an everlasting dishonor that will not be forgotten.

Because he did not put me to death from the womb,So that my mother would have been my grave,And her womb ever pregnant.

O house of David, thus says Yahweh:"Render justice every morning;And deliver the person who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor,Lest My wrath go forth like fireAnd burn with none to extinguish it,Because of the evil of their deeds.

Then they will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh their God and worshiped other gods and served them.'"

Do you become a king because you are competing in cedar?Did not your father eat and drinkAnd do justice and righteousness?Then it was well with him.

As for the prophets:My heart is broken within me;All my bones tremble;I have become like a drunken man,Even like a man overcome with wine,Because of YahwehAnd because of His holy words.

For the land is full of adulterers;For the land mourns because of the curse.The pastures of the wilderness have dried up.Their course also is evil,And their might is not right.