Jeremiah 14:1-22
14 Jehovah’s word that came to Jeremiah in the matter of the hard times.
2 Judah is mourning and its gates are forlorn; they are in black on the ground, and Jerusalem’s clamor has gone up;
3 * and their grandees have sent their underlings for water; they came to trenches, did not find water, went back with their buckets empty, were ashamed and humiliated and muffled their heads;
4 * and the tillers of the soil are dismayed because there have been no showers in the country; plowmen are ashamed, muffle their heads.
5 * For even a doe out on the range gives birth and leaves its offspring because no vegetation has come;
6 and wild asses stand on scalps panting for wind like jackals; their eyes break down because there is no herbage.
7 * If our guilt does testify against us, Jehovah, act for us for your own sake; because our apostasies have been many, before you we have sinned.
8 Hope of Israel, his savior in time of distress, why should you be like an immigrant in the country, like a traveler who has turned off to spend the night?
9 * Why should you be like a man in a trance, like a champion unable to bring victory? and you are among us, Jehovah, and we wear your name; do not lay us down.
10 Says Jehovah for this people “They have loved to tramp about so, they have put no restraint on their feet; and Jehovah has not accepted them—now he will remember their guilt and punish their sins.”
11 And Jehovah said to me “Do not pray for this people for good;
12 when they fast I am not listening to their appeal, and when they offer burnt-offering and grain-offering I am not accepting them; for with warfare and starvation and epidemics I am going to bring them to their finish.”
13 And I said “O, O, Lord Jehovah, here are the prophets saying to them ‘You shall not see warfare nor have starvation, for I will give sure safety in this place.’”
14 * And Jehovah said to me “The prophets are prophesying falsely in my name; I did not send them nor commission them nor speak to them; it is false vision and trumpery soothsaying and the humbug of their own heads that they are prophesying to you.
15 So Jehovah says of the prophets that prophesy in my name when I have not sent them, and are saying ‘There shall not be warfare nor starvation in this country,’ By warfare and starvation those prophets shall all go;
16 * and the people to whom they are prophesying shall be thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem in consequence of starvation and warfare and have nobody to bury them, they, their wives, and their children; and I will pour their wickedness upon them.
17 ** And you shall say to them this word: ‘Let my eyes dissolve in tears night and day and not be still, because the maiden daughter of my people is maimed with a great breaking of bones, a very desperate wound.
18 If I go out on the range I find men cut down in warfare, and if I go into the city I find the blight of starvation; for the very priest and prophet have fared to a country they did not know.’”
19 Have you actually repudiated Judah, or have you taken an aversion to Sion? how comes it you have struck us and there is no healing for us? we look for things to be all right, and there is nothing good; for a time of healing, and we find dissolution.
20 We know our wickedness, Jehovah, our fathers’ guilt, because we have sinned against you.
21 Do not be contemptuous, for the sake of your name; do not hold your throne of glory cheap; remember, do not break your covenant with us.
22 Are there rain-senders among the nothings of heathen superstition, or will the sky give showers? are not you the one, Jehovah our God? and we hope in you, because you made all these things.
Footnotes
^ 14:3 Or their bags
^ 14:4 Var. heads, inasmuch as the soil is dismayed (or is broken down) because
^ 14:5 Lit. and leaves, because
^ 14:7 Var. act for the sake of your name
^ 14:9 Var. be like a flustered (Unc.) man, like
^ 14:14 Codd. false vision and soothsaying and trumpery and
^ 14:16 Or pour their disaster
^ 14:17 Var. your eyes
^ 14:17 Or very rankling
