Jeremiah 8

¹ When that time comes – it is Yahweh who speaks – the bones of the kings of Judah, and of the princes, of the priests, of the prophets, of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, will be taken from their tombs.

² They will be spread out before the sun, the moon, the whole array of heaven, whom they have loved and served, followed, consulted and worshipped.[*a] They will not be gathered or reburied but stay lying on the surface like dung.

³ And death will seem preferable to life to all the survivors of this wicked race, wherever I have driven them – it is Yahweh Sabaoth who speaks.

⁴ ‘You are to tell them, “Yahweh says this: If you fall, can you not stand up again, if you stray can you never find your way back?

⁵ Why does this people persist in apostasy, in continuous apostasy? They cling to illusion, they refuse to come back.

⁶ I have listened attentively, they are not saying what they ought to: not one repents of his wickedness saying: What have I done? All go astray as they pursue their course like a horse charging into battle.

⁷ Even the stork in the sky knows the appropriate season; turtledove, swallow, crane, observe their time of migration. And my people do not know the ruling of Yahweh!

⁸ “How dare you say: We are wise, and we possess the Law of Yahweh? But look how it has been falsified by the lying pen of the scribes!

⁹ The wise shall be shamed, caught out, confounded. Look how they have rejected the word of Yahweh! So what use is their wisdom to them?

¹⁰ “So I will give their wives to other men, their fields to new masters, for all, least no less than greatest, all are out for dishonest gain; prophet no less than priest, all practise fraud.

¹¹ They dress my people’s wound without concern: Peace! Peace! they say, but there is no peace.

¹² They should be ashamed of their abominable deeds. But not they! They feel no shame, they have forgotten how to blush. And so as others fall, they too shall fall; they shall be thrown down when I come to deal with them – says Yahweh.

¹³ “I would like to go harvesting there, says Yahweh. But there are no grapes on the vine, no figs on the fig tree: even the leaves are withered. This is because I have brought them ravagers to ravage them.”‘

¹⁴ ‘Why do we sit still? Mobilise! Let us take to the fortified towns and perish there, since Yahweh our God wants us to perish: giving us poisoned water to drink because we have sinned against him.

¹⁵ We were hoping for peace – no good came of it! For the time of healing – nothing but terror!

¹⁶ From Dan you can hear the snorting of their horses; at the sound of their stallions’ neighing the whole countryside quakes: they come to devour the land and all it holds, the town and those that live in it.’

¹⁷ ‘Yes, now I send you serpents, adders, against which no charm exists; they will bite you – it is Yahweh who speaks –

¹⁸ incurably.

¹⁹ Listen, the cry of the daughter of my people sounds throughout the land, “Yahweh no longer in Zion? Her King no longer in her?” (Why have they provoked me with their carved images, with these Nothings from foreign countries?)

²⁰ “The harvest is over, summer at an end, and we have not been saved!”

²¹ The wound of the daughter of my people wounds me too, all looks dark to me, terror grips me.

²² Is there not balm in Gilead any more? Is there no doctor there? Then why does it make no progress, this cure of the daughter of my people?

²³ Who will turn my head into a fountain, and my eyes into a spring for tears, so that I may weep all day, all night, for all the dead out of the daughter of my people?