Study Desk

As for you, Pashhur, you and all your family will also be captured and taken off to Babylonia. There you will die and be buried, along with all your friends to whom you have told so many lies.'"

I hear everybody whispering, "Terror is everywhere! So let's report him to the authorities!" Even my close friends wait for my downfall. "Perhaps he can be tricked," they say; "then we can catch him and get revenge."

But, Almighty Lord , you test people justly; you know what is in their hearts and minds. So let me see you take revenge on my enemies, for I have placed my cause in your hands.

Doomed is the one who says, "I will build myself a mansion with spacious rooms upstairs." So he puts windows in his house, panels it with cedar, and paints it red.

So then, the Lord says about Josiah's son Jehoiakim, king of Judah, "No one will mourn his death or say, ‘How terrible, my friend, how terrible!' No one will weep for him or cry, ‘My lord! My king!'

But I have seen the prophets in Jerusalem do even worse: they commit adultery and tell lies; they help people to do wrong, so that no one stops doing what is evil. To me they are all as bad as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"So then, this is what I, the Lord Almighty, say about the prophets of Jerusalem: I will give them bitter plants to eat and poison to drink, because they have spread ungodliness throughout the land."

The Lord said, "I did not send these prophets, but even so they went. I did not give them any message, but still they spoke in my name.

So they must no longer use the words ‘the Lord 's burden,' because if any of them do, I will make my message a real burden to them. The people have perverted the words of their God, the living God, the Lord Almighty.

So the Lord said to me,

They told you to turn from your wicked way of life and from the evil things you are doing, so that you could go on living in the land that the Lord gave you and your ancestors as a permanent possession.

"So then, because you would not listen to him, the Lord Almighty says,

So I took the cup from the Lord 's hand, gave it to all the nations to whom the Lord had sent me, and made them drink from it.

Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah, together with its kings and leaders, were made to drink from it, so that they would become a desert, a terrible and shocking sight, and so that people would use their name as a curse—as they still do.

When King Jehoiakim and his soldiers and officials heard what Uriah had said, the king tried to have him killed. But Uriah heard about it; so he fled in terror and escaped to Egypt.

The Lord himself has said that he did not send them and that they are lying to you in his name. And so he will drive you out, and you will be killed, you and the prophets who are telling you these lies."

And so the Lord himself says that he is going to get rid of you. Before this year is over you will die because you have told the people to rebel against the Lord ."

Marry and have children. Then let your children get married, so that they also may have children. You must increase in numbers and not decrease.

Now stop and think! Can a man give birth to a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor? Why is everyone so pale?

I appeared to them from far away. People of Israel, I have always loved you, so I continue to show you my constant love.