The people will not admit their sins

4 Yahweh said to me, “Jeremiah, tell the people that this is what I, Yahweh, am saying to them:

‘When people fall down, they get up again, do they not [RHQ]?

When people are going along a road and find out that they are walking on the wrong road, they go back and find the correct road, do they not [RHQ]?

5 Yes, they do, so why do these people of Judah continue trusting in those idols that have deceived them?

They continue turning away from me,

even though I have warned them.

6 I have listened carefully [DOU] to what they say,

but they do not say what they should say.

Not one of them is sorry for having sinned.

No one says, “I have done [RHQ] wicked things.”

They are sinning and doing what they want to

as fast as [SIM] a horse that is running into a battle.

7 All the birds that fly south for the ◄winter/cold season► know the time that they need to fly south,

and they all return at the right time the following year.

But my people are not like those birds!

They do not know what I, Yahweh, require them to do.

8 Your men who teach you the laws that Moses wrote have been saying false things about those laws.

So, why [RHQ] do they continue saying, “We are very wise because we have the laws of Yahweh”?

9 Those teachers, who think that [IRO] they are wise, will be ashamed/disgraced and dismayed when they are taken to other countries by their enemies

because they sinned by rejecting what I told them.

Truly, they were not [RHQ] very wise to do that!

10 So, I will give their wives to other men;

I will give their fields to the enemy soldiers who conquer them.

All the people, including those who are important and those who are not important, deceive others in order to obtain their possessions.

Even my prophets and my priests do that.

11 They act as though the sins of my people are not serious,

like [MET] wounds that do not need to be cleaned and bandaged.

They tell the people that everything will go well with them,

but that is not true; things will not go well with them.

12 They should be [RHQ] ashamed when they do disgusting things [RHQ],

but they do not even know how to show on their faces that they are ashamed about their sins.

So, they will be killed, and their corpses also will lie among the corpses of others who have been slaughtered by their enemies.

They will be killed when I punish them.

13 I will allow their enemies to take away the figs and grapes that the people would have harvested from their fields.

Their fruit trees will all wither.

They will not receive all the blessings that I prepared for them.

This will certainly happen because I, Yahweh, have said it.’ ”

14 Then the people will say, “◄Why should we wait here in these small towns?/We should not wait here in these small towns.► [RHQ]!

We should go to the cities that have high walls around them,

but even if we do that we will be killed there,

because Yahweh our God has decided that we must be destroyed;

it is as though [MET] he has given us a cup of poison to drink,

because we sinned against him.

15 We hoped/desired that things would go well for us,

but things have not gone well.

We hoped that bad things would not happen to us any more,

but only things that terrify us are happening to us.

16 People far north in Israel in the city of Dan can already hear the snorting of the horses of their enemies who are preparing to attack us.

It is as though the entire land of Judah is shaking as their army approaches;

they are coming to destroy our land and everything in it, the people and the cities.”

17 Yahweh says, “I will send those enemy soldiers to Judah,

and they will be like [MET] poisonous snakes among you.

No one will be able to stop them from attacking you [MET];

they will attack you like snakes do, and kill you.”