Study Desk

Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently? They weren't at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse, says the Lord .

I have appointed you to be an assayer among My people— a refiner— so you may know and assay their way of life.

Then do you come and stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts'?

The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke Me to anger.

However, I did give them this command: Obey Me, and then I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must follow every way I command you so that it may go well with you.

The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and snared. They have rejected the word of the Lord , so what wisdom do they really have?

Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently? They weren't at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse," says the Lord .

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? So why has the healing of my dear people not come about?

I will raise weeping and a lament over the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness grazing land, for they have been so scorched that no one passes through. The sound of cattle is no longer heard. From the birds of the sky to the animals, everything has fled—they have gone away.

Who is the man wise enough to understand this? Who has the Lord spoken to, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a wilderness, so no one can pass through?

Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us so that our eyes may overflow with tears, our eyelids soaked with weeping.

He decorates it with silver and gold. It is fastened with hammer and nails, so it won't totter.

Yet they would not obey or pay attention; each one followed the stubbornness of his evil heart. So I brought on them all the curses of this covenant, because they had not done what I commanded them to do."

What right does My beloved have to be in My house, having carried out so many evil schemes? Can holy meat prevent your disaster so you can rejoice?

The Lord informed me, so I knew. Then You helped me to see their deeds,

for I was like a docile lamb led to slaughter. I didn't know that they had devised plots against me: "Let's destroy the tree with its fruit; let's cut him off from the land of the living so that his name will no longer be remembered."

So I bought underwear as the Lord instructed me and put it on.

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

So I went to the Euphrates and dug up the underwear and got it from the place where I had hidden it, but it was ruined—of no use at all.

Just as underwear clings to one's waist, so I fastened the whole house of Israel and of Judah to Me"—this is the Lord 's declaration—"so that they might be My people for My fame, praise, and glory, but they would not obey.