Study Desk

Take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard; both the birds of the air and the animals have fled and are gone.

Who is wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, so that they may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?

let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.

people deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

For thus says the Lord : I am going to sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and I will bring distress on them, so that they shall feel it.

which I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron-smelter, saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God,

that I may perform the oath that I swore to your ancestors, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day. Then I answered, "So be it, Lord ."

Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of an evil will. So I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not.

But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. And I did not know it was against me that they devised schemes, saying, "Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!"

So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord , and put it on my loins.

So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me.

Thus says the Lord : Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

For as the loincloth clings to one's loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord , in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.

Have you completely rejected Judah? Does your heart loathe Zion? Why have you struck us down so that there is no healing for us? We look for peace, but find no good; for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

You have rejected me, says the Lord , you are going backward; so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you— I am weary of relenting.

Like the partridge hatching what it did not lay, so are all who amass wealth unjustly; in mid-life it will leave them, and at their end they will prove to be fools.

So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.

Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord . Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

and shall say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it can never be mended. In Topheth they shall bury until there is no more room to bury.

because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great.