Jeremiah 9

¹Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

²Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place for travelers, that I might leave my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous ones.

³“And they bend their tongues like their bow in deception, and they are not mighty for the truth on the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me!” A declaration of YHWH.

⁴“Let each man take heed of his neighbor, and in any brother not trust. For every brother does utterly supplant, and every neighbor walks in slander.

⁵And each man will deceive his neighbor, and they will not speak the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak deception, and they weary themselves to commit iniquity.

⁶You dwell in the midst of deceit, for in deceit they refuse to know Me!” A declaration of YHWH.

⁷Therefore thus says YHWH of Hosts: “Behold, I am refining them, and I will test them! For how shall I act before the face of the daughter of My people?

⁸Their tongue is a slaughtering arrow, speaking deceit; with his mouth he speaks peace to his neighbor, and within himself he sets an ambush.

⁹Shall I not visit them for these things? A declaration of YHWH. On a nation such as this shall not My soul avenge itself?”

¹⁰Over the mountains I will take up weeping and wailing, and over the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up without man passing through, and they do not hear the voice of the cattle; from the birds of the heavens even to the beast they have fled; they have gone away.

¹¹“And I will make Jerusalem into heaps, a dwelling for jackals; and the cities of Judah I will make a desolation, without inhabitant.”

¹²Who is the wise man that he may understand this? And to whom has the mouth of YHWH spoken, that he may declare it? Because of what has the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, without one passing through?

¹³And YHWH said: “Because they have forsaken My law that I had set before their face, and they have not listened to My voice and have not walked by it.

¹⁴And they have walked after the stubborness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.

¹⁵Therefore thus says YHWH of Hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will feed them—this people—with wormwood, and give them to drink water of gall!

¹⁶And I will scatter them among the nations that have known, neither they nor their fathers, and I will send out after them a sword, until I have put an end to them!

¹⁷Thus says YHWH of Hosts: “Consider, and call for the wailing women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they may come!

¹⁸And let them hurry and take up for us a lament, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.

¹⁹For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! We are exceedingly ashamed, because we have left behind the land, because they have thrown down our dwellings!’”

²⁰Now hear, O women, the word of YHWH, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth! And teach your daughters a lamentation, and each woman her neighbor a dirge!

²¹For death has come up into our windows; it enters into our fortresses, to cut off the child from outside, the young men from the squares.

²²Speak thus: A declaration of YHWH—“The corpse of a man will fall like dung upon the face of the field, and like sheaves behind the reaper, and there shall be no one gathering!”

²³Thus says YHWH: “Let not the wise one glory in his wisdom, and let not the mighty one glory in his might, and let not the rich one glory in his riches;

²⁴that but let the one glorying glory in this, understanding and knowing Me, that I am YHWH, exercising loving devotion, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight!” A declaration of YHWH.

²⁵“Behold, the days are coming,” a declaration of YHWH, “When I will visit upon all the circumcised in the foreskin—

²⁶upon Egypt, and upon Judah, and upon Edom, and upon the sons of Ammon, and upon Moab, and upon all those cutting off a corner, those dwelling in the desert; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.