Study Desk

I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.

Food won’t be provided for the mourner to comfort him because of the dead. A consoling drink won’t be given him for the loss of his father or mother.

Then you will answer them, ‘Because your fathers abandoned me—this is the Lord’s declaration—and followed other gods, served them, and bowed in worship to them. Indeed, they abandoned me and did not keep my instruction.

I will first repay them double for their iniquity and sin because they have polluted my land. They have filled my inheritance with the carcasses of their abhorrent and detestable idols.”

because they have abandoned me and made this a foreign place. They have burned incense in it to other gods that they, their fathers, and the kings of Judah have never known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.

I will make this city desolate, an object of scorn. Everyone who passes by it will be appalled and scoff because of all its wounds.

and you are to proclaim to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Armies says: I will shatter these people and this city, like one shatters a potter’s jar that can never again be mended. They will bury the dead in Topheth because there is no other place for burials.

because he didn’t kill me in the wombso that my mother might have been my grave,her womb eternally pregnant.

They will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord their God and bowed in worship to other gods and served them.’”

Are you a king because you excel in cedar?Didn’t your father eat and drinkand administer justice and righteousness?Then it went well with him.

“Therefore, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says about the shepherds who tend my people: You have scattered my flock, banished them, and have not attended to them. I am about to attend to you because of your evil acts”—this is the Lord’s declaration.

For the land is full of adulterers;the land mourns because of the curse,and the grazing lands in the wilderness have dried up.Their way of life has become evil,and their power is not rightly used

because both prophet and priest are ungodly,even in my house I have found their evil.

But if you say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ then this is what the Lord says: Because you have said, ‘The burden of the Lord,’ and I specifically told you not to say, ‘The burden of the Lord,’

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God because they will return to me with all their heart.

“Therefore, this is what the Lord of Armies says: ‘Because you have not obeyed my words,

They will drink, stagger, and go out of their minds because of the sword I am sending among them.”

He has left his den like a lion,for their land has become a desolationbecause of the sword of the oppressor,because of his burning anger.

Perhaps they will listen and turn—each from his evil way of life—so that I might relent concerning the disaster that I plan to do to them because of the evil of their deeds.

Then the priests and prophets said to the officials and all the people, “This man deserves the death sentence because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears.”