Jeremiah
Jeremiah 5 ©
1 The judgments of God upon the Jews for their universal depravity and incorrigibleness; 7 for their adultery; 10 their blasphemous impiety; 15 their worship of strange gods; 20 their injustice and oppression for want of fearing the true God; 30 and their prevarication in religion.
RUN ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, aif ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.
O LORD, are cnot thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast dstricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but ethey have refused to receive correction: fthey have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.
Wherefore ja lion out of the forest shall slay them, and ka wolf of the 1evenings shall spoil them, a lleopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces: mbecause their transgressions are many, and their backslidings 2are increased.
¶nHow shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and osworn pby them that are no gods: when qI had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.
They rwere as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.
Lo, aI will bring a nation upon you from far, O bhouse of Israel, saith the LORD: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.
Their cquiver is as an open sepulchre, they are all mighty men.
And dthey shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword.
¶And it shall come to pass, when ye shall say, fWherefore doeth the LORD our God all these things unto us? then shalt thou answer them, gLike as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so hshall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours.
Declare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah, saying,
jFear ye not me? saith the LORD: kwill ye not tremble at my presence, which lhave placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?
As a 5cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of udeceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.
They vare waxen fat, they shine: yea, they woverpass the deeds of the wicked: xthey judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they yprosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.
The bprophets prophesy falsely, and the priests 7bear rule by their means; and my people clove to have it so: and dwhat will ye do in the end thereof?