The Linen Belt

13 The Lord said to me, “Go and buy a linen belt, and put it around yourself. But do not put it in water.” ² So I bought the belt as the Lord had said and put it around me. ³ Then the Word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, ⁴ “Take the belt that you have bought and are wearing, get up, and go to the Euphrates. Hide it there in a hole in the rock.” ⁵ So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had told me. ⁶ After many days the Lord said to me, “Get up and go to the Euphrates and get the belt which I told you to hide there.” ⁷ Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the belt from the place where I had hidden it. And I saw that the belt was worth nothing.

⁸ Then the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, ⁹ “This is what the Lord says: ‘In this way I will destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. ¹⁰ These sinful people would not listen to My words. They walk in the strong-will of their own hearts and have gone to serve and worship other gods. So let them be just like this linen belt, which is good for nothing. ¹¹ For as the belt holds on to a man’s body, so I made the whole family of Israel and the whole family of Judah hold on to Me,’ says the Lord. ‘This was so that they might be for Me a people, a name, a praise, and an honor. But they would not listen.’

The Wine Bottles

¹² “So you are to tell this to them: ‘The Lord, the God of Israel, says, “Every jar is to be filled with wine.”’ And when they say to you, ‘Do we not know very well that every jar is to be filled with wine?’ ¹³ then tell them, ‘The Lord says, “I am about to fill all the people of this land, the kings who sit on David’s throne, the religious leaders, the men of God, and all the people of Jerusalem with too much drink. ¹⁴ And I will throw them against each other, both the fathers and sons together,” says the Lord. “I will not let pity or sorrow or loving-kindness keep Me from destroying them.”’”

Pride Comes before Punishment

¹⁵ Listen and hear. Do not be proud, for the Lord has spoken. ¹⁶ Give honor to the Lord your God before He brings darkness and before you slip and fall on the dark mountains. You hope for light, but He will turn it into darkness and it will be very dark. ¹⁷ But if you will not listen, my soul will cry in secret because of your pride. My eyes will cry with a bitter cry and tears will flow down, because the Lord’s people have been taken away in chains. ¹⁸ Say to the king and the queen mother, “Come down from your throne. Your beautiful crown has been taken from your head.” ¹⁹ The cities of the Negev have been locked up, and there is no one to open them. All Judah has been taken away. All the people of Judah have been taken to another land.

²⁰ “Look up and see those who are coming from the north. Where is the flock that was given to you, your beautiful sheep? ²¹ What will you say when He sets over you those whom you have taught and who were your friends? Will not pain take hold of you, like a woman giving birth? ²² And if you say in your heart, ‘Why have these things happened to me?’ It is because of your many sins that your clothing has been torn off and you suffer punishment. ²³ Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are used to doing wrong. ²⁴ I will cause you to go everywhere like straw blown by the desert wind. ²⁵ This is what you get, the share given to you from Me,” says the Lord, “because you have forgotten Me and trusted in lies. ²⁶ So I will pull your clothing up over your face, that your shame may be seen. ²⁷ As for your sex sins and cries of desire, your sinful sex acts on the hills in the field, I have seen your hated sins. It is bad for you, O Jerusalem! How long will you be unclean?”

No Water—No Food

14 The Word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah when there was no water: ² “Judah is full of sorrow and her gates are weak. Her people sit on the ground in sorrow, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. ³ Their men of honor have sent their servants for water. They have come to the wells and found no water, and returned with their jars empty. They have been put to shame and troubled, and covered their heads. ⁴ The ground is dried up because there has been no rain on the land. The farmers have been put to shame and have covered their heads. ⁵ Even the deer in the field leaves her young one which has just been born, because there is no grass. ⁶ The wild donkeys stand on the open hill-tops. They breathe hard for air like wild dogs. Their eyes become weak because there is nothing to eat.

⁷ “Even when our sins speak against us, O Lord, do something for the good of Your name. For we have fallen away from You many times. We have sinned against You. ⁸ You are the Hope of Israel, the One Who saves it in time of trouble. Why are You like a stranger in the land? Why are You like a traveler who has set up his tent for the night? ⁹ Why are You like a man surprised, like a strong man who cannot save? Yet You are among us, O Lord, and we are called by Your name. Do not leave us!”

¹⁰ The Lord says this about these people, “They have loved to go their own way. They have not held their feet back. So the Lord is not pleased with them. Now He will remember their wrong-doing and punish their sins.” ¹¹ The Lord said to me, “Do not pray for the well-being of these people. ¹² When they go without food, I will not listen to their cry. And when they give burnt gifts and grain gifts, I will not receive them. But I will destroy them by the sword, hunger and disease.”

¹³ Then I said, “O Lord God, the ones who speak in Your name are telling them, ‘You will not see the sword and you will not go hungry. But I will give you lasting peace in this place.’” ¹⁴ Then the Lord said to me, “Those men are speaking lies in My name. I have not sent them, or told them, or spoken to them. They are telling you a false dream of a false future that means nothing. They are speaking the lies of their own hearts. ¹⁵ So this is what the Lord says about those men who tell what is going to happen in the future using My name. I did not send them, yet they keep saying, ‘There will be no sword or hunger in this land.’ So by the sword and by hunger those false teachers will be destroyed! ¹⁶ And the people they tell these things to will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of hunger and the sword. There will be no one to bury them, or their wives, or their sons, or their daughters. For I will pour out their own sin upon them. ¹⁷ You will say to them, ‘Let my eyes flow with tears without stopping night and day. For my people have been crushed with a very hard beating. ¹⁸ If I go out to the country, I see those killed by the sword! Or if I go into the city, I see diseases because of hunger! For both the man who speaks for God and the religious leader have gone around and around in the land they do not know.’”

The People Cry to the Lord

¹⁹ Have You nothing at all to do with Judah any more? Do You hate Zion? Why have You punished us so that we cannot be healed? We waited for peace, but nothing good came. We waited for a time of healing, but there is much trouble. ²⁰ We know that we are sinful, O Lord, and we know the sin of our fathers. For we have sinned against You. ²¹ For the good of Your name do not hate us. Do not put to shame the throne of Your shining-greatness. Remember and do not break Your agreement with us. ²² Are there any among the false gods of the nations who give rain? Or can the heavens give rain? Is it not You, O Lord our God? So we hope in You. For You are the One Who has done all these things.

Troubles for Judah

15 Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me, My heart would not be with these people. Send them away from Me and let them go! ² And when they ask you, ‘Where should we go?’ then tell them, ‘The Lord says, “Those who are to die, to death, and those who are to be killed by the sword, to the sword. Those who are to go hungry, to hunger, and those who are to be taken away as prisoners, to be taken away.’ ³ I will set over them four kinds of destroyers,” says the Lord: “The sword to kill, the dogs to take away, and the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth to eat and destroy. ⁴ I will make them an object of much fear and hate among all the nations of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.

⁵ “Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will have sorrow for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your well-being? ⁶ You have turned away from Me,” says the Lord. “You keep going back into sin. So I will put out My hand against you and destroy you. I am tired of having pity on you! ⁷ I will throw them to the wind like straw at the gates of the land. I will take their children from them. I will destroy My people. For they did not turn from their ways. ⁸ Their women whose husbands have died will be as many as the sand of the seas. At noon I will bring a destroyer against the mothers of young men. I will bring suffering and fear to them all at once. ⁹ She who gave birth to seven sons will become weak and die. Her sun will set while it is still day, and she will be put to shame. I will give the rest of them to the sword in front of those who hate them,” says the Lord.

Jeremiah Complains

¹⁰ It is bad for me, my mother, that you have given birth to me! I am a man of trouble and fighting to all the land. No one owes money to me, and I do not owe money to others, yet every one curses me. ¹¹ The Lord said, “For sure I will set you free for a good reason. For sure I will make those who hate you ask of you in times of trouble and suffering.

¹² “Can anyone crush iron, iron from the north, or brass? ¹³ I will give your money and riches to those who fight against you, without a price, because of all your sins in all your land. ¹⁴ I will make those who hate you bring your riches into a land you do not know. For My anger has started a fire that will burn you.”

¹⁵ O Lord, You understand. Remember me and visit me. And punish those who make it hard for me. Do not take me away, for You are slow to be angry. Know that because of You I suffer and am put to shame. ¹⁶ Your words were found and I ate them. And Your words became a joy to me and the happiness of my heart. For I have been called by Your name, O Lord God of All. ¹⁷ I did not sit with those who were having fun, and I was not full of joy. I sat alone because Your hand was upon me. For You had filled me with hate for their sin. ¹⁸ Why is there no end to my pain? And why will my hurt not be healed? Will You be to me like a river that flows with water some of the time and is dry at other times?

The Lord’s Answer

¹⁹ So the Lord says, “If you return, then I will let you take your place again, standing before Me. And if you take out what is of worth from what is of no worth, then you will speak for Me. Let these people turn to you, but you must not turn to them. ²⁰ Then I will make you like a strong wall of brass to these people. Even if they fight against you, they will not get power over you. For I am with you to save you and bring you out of trouble,” says the Lord. ²¹ “I will take you from the hand of the sinful. And I will free you from the hand of those who would hurt you.”

16 The Word of the Lord came to me, saying, ² “Do not get married or have sons or daughters in this place.” ³ For this is what the Lord says about the sons and daughters born in this land, and about their mothers who give birth to them, and their fathers who gave them life in this land: ⁴ “They will die of bad diseases. No one will cry for them or bury them. They will be as animal waste on the ground, destroyed by sword and hunger. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the earth.”

⁵ For the Lord says, “Do not go into a house where the people have lost a loved one. Do not go to cry or to comfort them. For I have taken My peace, My loving-kindness and My pity from these people,” says the Lord. ⁶ “Both great men and small will die in this land. They will not be buried. No one will cry for them. And no one will cut himself or cut off his hair for them. ⁷ No one will give food to comfort those who sorrow for the dead. And no one will give them the cup of comfort to drink even for the death of their father or mother. ⁸ Do not go into a house where they are eating much and sit with them to eat and drink.” ⁹ For the Lord of All, the God of Israel, says, “Before your eyes and in your time, I am going to bring an end to the voice of joy, the voice of happiness, the voice of the man to be married and the voice of the bride in this place.

¹⁰ “When you tell these people all these words, they will say to you, ‘Why has the Lord said all these bad things will happen to us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we done against the Lord our God?’ ¹¹ Then you tell them, ‘It is because your fathers before you have turned away from Me,’ says the Lord. ‘They have followed other gods and served them and worshiped them. But they have left Me and have not kept My Law. ¹² And you have sinned even more than your fathers before you. For see, each one of you is following the strong-will of his own sinful heart instead of listening to Me. ¹³ So I will throw you out of this land into a land which you and your fathers have not known. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

God Will Bring Israel Back

¹⁴ “So the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives, Who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt.’ ¹⁵ But it will be said, ‘As the Lord lives, Who brought the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where He had sent them.’ For I will return them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.

The Punishment That Is Coming

¹⁶ “See, I am going to send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they will fish for them. After this I will send for many men who hunt. And they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes in the rocks. ¹⁷ For I see all their ways. They are not hidden from My face, and their sin is not hidden from My eyes. ¹⁸ And I will pay them back twice as much for their wrong-doing and their sin, because they have made My land unclean. They have filled My land with the bodies of their hated false gods and with sinful things offered to them.”

Jeremiah’s Prayer

¹⁹ O Lord, my strength and my strong-place, my safe place in the day of trouble, nations will come to You from the ends of the earth and say, “Our fathers have received nothing but lies, only things that have no worth and do not help them.” ²⁰ Can man make his own gods? What man makes is not gods!

²¹ “So I am going to make them know. This time I will make them know My power and My strength. And they will know that My name is the Lord.”