Jeremiah 5:1-8

GOD’S WORD Translation

5 Walk around the streets of Jerusalem.
Look around, and think about these things.
Search the city squares.
See if you can find anyone
who does what is right and seeks the truth.
Then I will forgive Jerusalem.
² People say, “As the Lord lives …”
Yet, they lie when they take this oath.
³ Lord, your eyes look for the truth.
You strike these people, but they don’t feel it.
You crush them, but they refuse to be corrected.
They are more stubborn than rocks.
They refuse to turn back.
⁴ I thought, “These are poor, foolish people.
They don’t know the way of the Lord
and the justice that God demands.
⁵ Let me go to important people and speak to them.
They know the way of the Lord
and the justice that God demands.”
But they, too, had broken off their yokes ^[a]
and torn off their chains.
⁶ That is why a lion from the forest will attack them.
A wolf from the wilderness will destroy them.
A leopard will lie in ambush outside their cities.
All who leave the cities will be torn to pieces,
because they rebel so often
and they become more and more unfaithful.