Jeremiah 12

⁶ ‘Yes, even your own brothers and your own family play you false. Behind your back, they too criticise you openly. Put no reliance on them when they seem to be friendly.’

¹ You have right on your side, Yahweh, when I complain about you. But I would like to debate a point of justice with you. Why is it that the wicked live so prosperously? Why do scoundrels enjoy peace?

² You plant them, they take root, and flourish, and even bear fruit. You are always on their lips, yet so far from their hearts.

³ You know me, Yahweh, you see me, you probe my heart, it is in your hands. Drag them off like sheep for the slaughter-house, reserve them for the day of butchery.

⁴ (How long will the land be in mourning, and the grass wither all over the countryside? The animals and birds are dying as a result of the wickedness of the inhabitants.) For they say, ‘God does not see our behaviour’.

⁵ If you find it exhausting to race against men on foot, how will you compete against horses? If you are not secure in a peaceful country, how will you manage in the thickets along the Jordan?

⁷ ‘I have abandoned my house, left my heritage, I have delivered what I dearly loved into the hands of its enemies.

⁸ For me my heritage has become a lion in the forest, it roars at me ferociously: so I now hate it.

⁹ Or is my heritage a speckled bird for the birds to flock on her thus from all directions? Come on, all you wild beasts, gather round, fall on the quarry!

¹⁰ Many shepherds have laid my vineyard waste, have trampled down my inheritance, reducing my pleasant inheritance to a deserted wilderness.

¹¹ They have made it a mournful, desolate place, desolate before me. The whole land has been devastated and no one takes it to heart.

¹² The devastators have arrived on all the bare heights of the desert (for Yahweh wields a sword that devours): from end to end of the land there is no peace for any living thing.

¹³ Wheat they have sown, thorns they reap: they have worn themselves out, to no profit. They are disappointed in their harvests, through the fury of Yahweh.

¹⁴ ‘Thus says Yahweh: As for all my evil neighbours who have laid hands on the heritage I granted my people Israel I will now tear them from their countries. (But I will tear the House of Judah out of their hands.)

¹⁵ But, once torn out, I will take pity on them again and bring them back each to his heritage, each to his own country.

¹⁶ And if they take care to learn my people’s way and to swear by my name, “As Yahweh lives”, as my people learned from them to swear by Baal, then they shall have a place among my people.

¹⁷ But if any nation refuses to listen, I will tear it up by the roots and destroy it – it is Yahweh who speaks.’