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Jeremiah 8

8 Yahweh says, “At the time that your corpses are scattered on the ground, your enemies will break open the graves of your kings and other officials who lived in Judah, and the graves of your priests and prophets and other people who lived in Jerusalem and bring out their bones. 2 They will dishonor those people by scattering their bones on the ground under the sun and the moon and all the stars—those are the gods which my people loved, served, sought after, and worshiped. No one will gather up their bones and bury them again; they will remain scattered on the ground like dung. 3 And all the people of this wicked nation who are still alive and whom I have exiled to other countries will prefer to die rather than to continue to stay alive in all those countries.” That will happen because Yahweh the commander of angel armies has said it.

4 Yahweh said to me, “Jeremiah, tell the people that this is what I, Yahweh, am saying to them: ‘You know that when people fall down, they get up again and

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!

5 So why do these people of Jerusalem rebel against me and continue trusting in those idols?

They trust in those idols that have deceived them and refuse to change their behavior.

6 I have listened carefully 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 wicked things.” They all are sinning and doing what they want to

as fast as a horse that is running into a battle.

7 All the birds that fly south for the 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, they should not continue saying, “We are wise because we have the laws of Yahweh”?

9 Those teachers, who think that they are wise, will be ashamed and dismayed when they are taken to other countries by their enemies.

Indeed, they rejected what I, Yahweh, told them, which shows that they are not wise!

10 So, I will give their wives to other men; I will give their fields to the enemy soldiers who conquer them.

I will do this because all the people, the least important and those who are most important and everyone in between, are all trying to get money by tricking others.

Even the prophets and priests, they all do that.

11 They act as though the sins of my people are not serious, like 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 ashamed when they do disgusting things, but they are not ashamed at all! They do not even know how to blush about their sins!

So, they will be killed, and their corpses also will lie among the corpses of others whose enemies have killed them. They will be killed when I, Yahweh, punish them.”

13 I will surely allow their enemies to take away the grapes and figs 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 Yahweh, has said it.

14 Then the people will say, “We should not wait here in these small towns. 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 he has given us a cup of poisoned water to drink, because we sinned against him.

15 We hoped 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 things that terrify us are happening to us.

16 People far north in Israel in the city of Dan have already heard the snorting of the horses of our enemies who are preparing to attack us. Because of the sound of the neighing of their stallions it is as though the entire land of Judah is shaking.

Our enemies are coming to destroy our land and everything in it, the cities and the people who live in them.”

17 Yahweh says, “I will send those enemy soldiers to Judah, and they will be like poisonous snakes among you,

like poisonous snakes that no one will be able to stop them attacking you; they will attack you like snakes do, and kill you.”

18 Then I, Jeremiah said, “I wish that in my grieving I could find something to comfort me! I am very sad in my inner being!

19 Listen! Throughout our land, the people ask, ‘Has Yahweh abandoned Jerusalem?

Is Yahweh, our city’s king, no longer there?’ Yahweh replies, ‘My people have caused me to become very angry by worshiping idols and foreign gods!’

20 The people say, “The harvest season is finished, the hot season has ended, but Yahweh has not rescued us from our enemies.”

21 I, Jeremiah cry because it is as if my people have been crushed. I mourn, and I am completely dismayed.

22 I ask, “Surely there is medicinal balm in the region of Gilead! Surely there are doctors there!”

But my people are very spiritually sick and their spiritual health is not restored.