12Who is the man wise enough to understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a desert, so no one can pass through it?
13And the Lord answered, “It is because they have forsaken My law, which I set before them; they have not walked in it or obeyed My voice. 14Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts and gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them.”
15Therefore this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Behold, I will feed this people wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink. 16I will scatter them among the nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”
17This is what the Lord of Hosts says:
“Take note, and summon the wailing women;
send for the most skillful among them.
18Let them come quickly
and take up a lament over us,
that our eyes may overflow with tears,
and our eyelids may gush with water.
19For the sound of wailing
is heard from Zion:
‘How devastated we are!
How great is our shame!
For we have abandoned the land
because our dwellings have been torn down.’”
20Now, O women, hear the word of the Lord.
Open your ears to the word of His mouth.
Teach your daughters to wail,
and one another to lament.
21For death has climbed in through our windows;
it has entered our fortresses
to cut off the children from the streets,
the young men from the town squares.
22Declare that this is what the Lord says:
“The corpses of men will fall like dung
upon the open field,
like newly cut grain behind the reaper,
with no one to gather it.”
23This is what the Lord says:
“Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom,
nor the strong man in his strength,
nor the wealthy man in his riches.
24But let him who boasts boast in this,
that he understands and knows Me,
that I am the Lord,
who exercises loving devotion,
justice and righteousness on the earth—
for I delight in these things,”
declares the Lord.
25“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh- 26Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert who clip the hair of their temples. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”
Footnotes (5)
av6 That is, Jeremiah dwells (the Hebrew is singular)
ev24 Forms of the Hebrew chesed are translated here and in most cases throughout the Scriptures as loving devotion; the range of meaning includes love, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and mercy, as well as loyalty to a covenant.