Jeremiah 13

¹ Yahweh said this to me, ‘Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it round your waist. But do not dip it in water.’

² And so, as Yahweh had ordered, I bought a loincloth and put it round my waist.

³ A second time the word of Yahweh was spoken to me,

⁴ ‘Take the loincloth that you have bought and are wearing round your waist; up! Go to the Euphrates and hide it in a hole in the rock.’

⁵ So I went and hid it near the Euphrates as Yahweh had ordered me.

⁶ Many days afterwards Yahweh said to me, ‘Get up and go to the Euphrates and fetch the loincloth I ordered you to hide there’.

⁷ So I went to the Euphrates, and I searched, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. The loincloth was spoilt, good for nothing.

⁸ Then the word of Yahweh was addressed to me,

⁹ ‘Thus says Yahweh: In the same way I will spoil the arrogance of Judah and Jerusalem.

¹⁰ This evil people who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the dictates of their own hard hearts, who have followed alien gods, and served them and worshipped them, let them become like this loincloth, good for nothing.

¹¹ For just as a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I had intended the whole House of Judah to cling to me – it is Yahweh who speaks – to be my people, my glory, my honour and my boast. But they have not listened.

¹² ‘Tell this people, “Any jug can be filled with wine”. And if they answer you, “Do you think we do not know that any jug can be filled with wine?”

¹³ you are to say, “Thus says Yahweh: I am now going to fill all the inhabitants of this land with drunkenness, the kings who occupy the throne of David, the priests and the prophets, and all the citizens of Jerusalem.

¹⁴ And I will smash them one against the other, father and son together – it is Yahweh who speaks. Mercilessly, relentlessly, pitilessly, I will destroy them.”‘

¹⁵ Listen, pay attention, away with pride – Yahweh is speaking!

¹⁶ Give glory to Yahweh our God before he brings darkness down and your feet stumble on the darkened mountains. You hope for light, but he will turn it into deep shadow, change it into gloom.

¹⁷ If you do not listen to this warning, I will bewail your pride in secret, tears will flood my eyes, for Yahweh’s flock is led into captivity.

¹⁸ Tell the king and the queen mother, ‘Sit in a lower place, since your glorious crown has fallen from your head’.

¹⁹ The towns of the Negeb are shut off[*a] with no one to give access to them. All Judah has been deported, deported wholesale.

²⁰ ‘Raise your eyes, Jerusalem, and look at these now coming from the North. Where is the flock once entrusted to you, the flock that was your boast?

²¹ What will you say when they descend on you as conquerors, those you yourself taught to be your friends? Will not anguish grip you like a woman in labour?

²² You may ask yourself, “Why has all this happened to me?” Because of your great wickedness your skirts have been pulled up,[*b] and you have been manhandled.

²³ Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? And you, can you do what is right, you so accustomed to wrong?

²⁴ I will scatter you like chaff driven by the desert wind.

²⁵ This is your share, the wage of your apostasy. This comes from me – it is Yahweh who speaks – because you have forgotten me and put your trust in a Delusion.

²⁶ I will also pull your skirts up as high as your face and let your shame be seen.

²⁷ Oh! Your adulteries, your shrieks of pleasure, your vile prostitution! On the hills, in the countryside, I have seen your Abominations. Woe to you, Jerusalem, unclean still! How much longer will you go on like this?’