Jeremiah 7

The message at the temple gate

¹This message came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ²“Take your stand at the gate of the house of the LORD and announce this word there. Say: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah, everyone who comes in through these gates to worship the LORD.

³The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Change your ways and your actions for the better, and I will let you live in this place.^{a 4}Do not trust in deceptive words when people say, “This is the LORD’s temple, the LORD’s temple, the LORD’s temple!” ⁵If you really change your ways and your actions for the better, if you truly treat one another with justice, ⁶if you do not oppress the outsider, the fatherless child and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and do not follow other gods to your own ruin, ⁷then I will let you go on living here in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors long ago, for all time. ⁸But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. ⁹Will you steal and murder and commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods you have never known, ¹⁰and then come and stand before me in this house that bears my name and say, “We are safe!”, only to go on doing all these detestable things? ¹¹Has this house that bears my name become a hideout for robbers in your eyes? I myself have seen it, declares the LORD.

¹²Go now to my place in Shiloh, where I first made my name dwell, and look at what I did to it on account of the wickedness of my people Israel. ¹³And now, declares the LORD, because you have done all these things, and I spoke to you again and again and you would not listen, and I called you and you did not answer, ¹⁴so I will do to this house that bears my name, the house you trust in, and to the place I gave you and your ancestors, what I did to Shiloh. ¹⁵I will throw you out of my presence, just as I threw out all your kin, all the descendants of Ephraim.’

¹⁶As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not raise a cry or a prayer for them, and do not plead with me, because I will not listen to you. ¹⁷Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. They pour drink offerings out to other gods, and so they provoke me to anger.^{b 19}Is it really me they are provoking? declares the LORD. Is it not themselves they hurt, to their own disgrace?

²⁰So the Lord GOD says this: Look, my anger, my fury, is about to be poured out on this place, on people and animals, on the trees of the field and the crops of the ground. It will burn and not be put out.

Obey my voice

²¹The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! ²²For when I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices.^{c 23}Instead, this is what I commanded them: ‘Obey my voice; then I will be your God, and you will be my people. Walk in every way I command you, so that it may go well with you.’ ²⁴But they did not listen or pay attention. They followed their own plans, in the stubbornness of their evil hearts. They went backward instead of forward. ²⁵From the day your ancestors left the land of Egypt until today, I have sent you all my servants the prophets, day after day, again and again. ²⁶Yet they did not listen to me or pay attention. They stiffened their necks and did more evil than their ancestors. ²⁷When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you; when you call them, they will give you no answer. ²⁸Then say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God and would not accept correction. Faithfulness has died; it is gone from their lips.’

The Valley of Slaughter

²⁹Cut off your consecrated hair and throw it away; raise a lament on the bare hills, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned the generation that is under his wrath. ³⁰The people of Judah have done what is evil in my sight, declares the LORD. They have placed their detestable idols in the house that bears my name and so defiled it. ³¹In the Valley of Ben-hinnom they have built the high places of Topheth, to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, a thing I never commanded and that never entered my mind.

³²So look, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. They will bury the dead in Topheth because there will be no room anywhere else.^{d 33}The dead bodies of this people will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals, and no one will scare them off. ³⁴In the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem I will silence the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bridegroom and bride, for the land will lie in ruins.