Part 501 (1/2)

6:22. Thus saith the Lord: Behold a people cometh from the land of the north, and a great nation shall rise up from the ends of the earth.

6:23. They shall lay hold on arrow and s.h.i.+eld: they are cruel, and will have no mercy. Their voice shall roar like the sea: and they shall mount upon horses, prepared as men for war, against thee, O daughter of Sion.

6:24. We have heard the fame thereof, our hands grow feeble: anguish hath taken hold of us, as a woman in labour.

6:25. Go not out into the fields, nor walk in the highway: for the sword of the enemy, and fear is on every side.

6:26. Gird thee with sackcloth, O daughter of my people, and sprinkle thee with ashes: make thee mourning as for an only son, a bitter lamentation, because the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us.

6:27. I have set thee for a strong trier among my people: and thou shalt know, and prove their way.

6:28. All these princes go out of the way, they walk deceitfully, they are bra.s.s and iron: they are all corrupted.

6:29. The bellows have failed, the lead is consumed in the fire, the founder hath melted in vain: for their wicked deeds are not consumed.

6:30. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord hath rejected them.

Jeremias Chapter 7

The temple of G.o.d shall not protect a sinful people, without a sincere conversion. The Lord will not receive the prayers of the prophet for them: because they are obstinate in their sins.

7:1. The word that came to Jeremias from the Lord, saying:

7:2. Stand in the gate of the house of the Lord, and proclaim there this word, and say: Hear ye the word of the Lord, all ye men of Juda, that enter in at these gates, to adore the Lord.

7:3. Thus saith the Lord of hosts the G.o.d of Israel: Make your ways and your doings good: and I will dwell with you in this place.

7:4. Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord.

7:5. For if you will order well your ways, and your doings: if you will execute judgment between a man and his neighbour,

7:6. If you oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, and walk not after strange G.o.ds to your own hurt,

7:7. I will dwell with you in this place: in the land, which I gave to your fathers from the beginning and for evermore.

7:8. Behold you put your trust in lying words, which shall not profit you:

7:9. To steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer to Baalim, and to go after strange G.o.ds, which you know not.

7:10. And you have come, and stood before me in this house, in which my name is called upon, and have said: We are delivered, because we have done all these abominations.

7:11. Is this house then, in which my name hath been called upon, in your eyes become a den of robbers? I, I am he: I have seen it, saith the Lord.

7:12. Go ye to my place in Silo, where my name dwelt from the beginning: and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel:

7:13. And now, because you have done all these works, saith the Lord: and I have spoken to you rising up early, and speaking, and you have not heard: and I have called you, and you have not answered:

7:14. I will do to this house, in which my name is called upon, and in which you trust, and to the place which I have given you and your fathers, as I did to Silo.

7:15. And I will cast you away from before my face, as I have cast away all your brethren, the whole seed of Ephraim.