Study Desk

Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, and I will leave my people, and depart from them? because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors.

And they have bent their tongue, as a bow, for lies, and not for truth: they have strengthened themselves upon the earth, for they have proceeded from evil to evil, and me they have not known, saith the Lord.

And a man shall mock his brother, and they will not speak the truth: for they have taught their tongue to speak lies: they have laboured to commit iniquity.

For the mountains I will take up weeping and lamentation, and for the beautiful places of the desert, mourning: because they are burnt up, for that there is not a man that passeth through them: and they have not heard the voice of the owner: from the fowl of the air to the beasts they are gone away and departed.

And the Lord said: Because they have forsaken my law, which I gave them, and have not heard my voice, and have not walked in it.

But they have gone after the perverseness of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them.

And I will scatter them among the nations, which they and their fathers have not known: and I will send the sword after them till they be consumed.

They are framed after the likeness of a palm tree, and shall not speak: they must be carried to be removed, because they cannot go. Therefore fear them not, for they can neither do evil nor good.

They shall be all proved together to be senseless and foolish: the doctrine of their vanity is wood.

They are vain things, and a ridiculous work: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.

For thus saith he Lord: Behold I will cast away far off the inhabitants of the land at this time: and I will afflict them, so that they may be found.

My tabernacle is laid waste, all my cords are broken: my children are gone out from me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains.

Because the pastors have done foolishly, and have not sought the Lord: therefore have they not understood, and all their flock is scattered.

Pour out thy indignation upon the nations that have not known thee, and upon the provinces that have not called upon thy name: because they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have destroyed his glory.

And they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear: but walked every one in the perverseness of his own wicked heart: and I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did them not.

They are returned to the former iniquities of their fathers, who refused to hear my words: so these likewise have gone after strange gods, to serve them: the house of Israel, and the house of Juda have made void my covenant, which I made with their fathers.

Wherefore thus saith the Lord: Behold I will bring in evils upon them, which they shall not be able to escape: and they shall cry to me, and I will not hearken to them.

And the cities of Juda, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall go, and cry to the gods to whom they offer sacrifice, and they shall not save them in the time of their affliction.

And the Lord of hosts that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee: for the evils of the house of Israel, and of the house of Juda, which they have done to themselves, to provoke me, offering sacrifice to Baalim.

And I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim: and I knew not that they had devised counsels against me, saying: Let us put wood on his bread, and cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more.