Study Desk

A voice was heard in the highways, weeping and howling of the children of Israel: because they have made their way wicked, they have forgotten the Lord their God.

We shall sleep in our confusion, and our shame shall cover us, because we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers from our youth even to this day, and we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God.

Be circumcised to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, ye men of Juda, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my indignation come forth like fire, and burn, and there be none that can quench it because of the wickedness of your thoughts.

They are set round about her, as keepers of fields: because she hath provoked me to wrath, saith the Lord.

Thy ways, and thy devices have brought these things upon thee: this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it hath touched thy heart.

The Earth shall mourn, and the heavens shall lament from above: because I have spoken, I have purposed, and I have not repented, neither am I turned away from it.

For I have heard the voice as of a woman in travail, anguishes as of a woman in labour of a child. The voice of the daughter of Sion, dying away, spreading her hands: Woe is me, for my soul hath fainted because of them that are slain.

Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions are strengthened.

Scale the walls thereof, and throw them down, but do not utterly destroy: take away the branches thereof, because they are not the Lord’s.

Thus saith the Lord the God of hosts: because you have spoken this word, behold I will make my words in thy mouth as fire, and this people as wood, and it shall devour them.

They were confounded, because they committed abomination: yea, rather they were not confounded with confusion, and they knew not how to blush: wherefore they shall fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall fall down, saith the Lord.

Hear, O earth: Behold I will bring evils upon this people, the fruits of their own thoughts: because they have not heard my words, and they have cast away my law.

Gird thee with sackcloth, O daughter of my people, and sprinkle thee with ashes: make thee mourning as for an only son, a bitter lamentation, because the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us.

And you have come, and stood before me in this house, in which my name is called upon, and have said: We are delivered, because we have done all these abominations.

And now, because you have done all these works, saith the Lord: and I have spoken to you rising up early, and speaking, and you have not heard: and I have called you, and you have not answered:

Because the children of Juda have done evil in my eyes, saith the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house in which my name is called upon, to pollute it;

Therefore behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and it shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Ennom: but the valley of slaughter: and they shall bury in Topheth, because there is no place.

Therefore will I give their women to strangers, their fields to others for an inheritance: because from the least even to the greatest all follow covetousness: from the prophet even to the priest all deal deceitfully.

They are confounded, because they have committed abomination: yea rather they are not confounded with confusion, and they have not known how to blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall; in the time of their visitation they shall fall, saith the Lord.

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.