1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
2"Stand in the gate of the LORD's house, and proclaim this word there. Say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah who come in through these gates to worship the LORD."
3'This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Mend your ways and your doings, and I will let you live in this place.
4'Do not trust in lying words that say, The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD are these.
5'For if you truly mend your ways and your doings, and if you truly judge fairly between a man and his neighbour;
6'if you do not crush the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, and do not pour out innocent blood in this place, and do not follow other gods, which brings harm on you,
7'then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.
8'Look, you are trusting in lying words that can do you no good.
9'Will you steal, murder and commit adultery? Will you swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you do not know,
10'and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are safe to do all these detestable things?
11'Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Look, I myself have seen it, says the LORD.
12'But go now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I first made my name to live. See what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.
13'And now, because you have done all these things, says the LORD, and I spoke to you, getting up early to speak, but you did not listen, and I called you, but you did not answer,
14'therefore I will do to this house, which is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, what I did to Shiloh.
15'And I will throw you out of my sight, as I threw out all your brothers, the whole family of Ephraim.'
16"So do not pray for this people. Do not lift up a cry or a prayer for them, and do not beg me for them, for I will not hear you."
18"The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, so that they make me angry."
19"Is it me they make angry? says the LORD. Is it not themselves, to the shame of their own faces?"
20"So this is what the Lord GOD says: Look, my anger and my fury will be poured out on this place, on people and on animals, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. It will burn, and no one will put it out."
21"This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices, and eat the meat yourselves."
22"For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them, about burnt offerings or sacrifices on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt."
23"But this is what I commanded them: Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, so that it may go well with you."
24"But they did not listen, and they did not turn their ear to me. They walked by their own plans and by the stubborn thoughts of their evil heart, and they went backward, not forward."
25"From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all my servants the prophets, getting up early each day and sending them."
26"Yet they did not listen to me, and they did not turn their ear to me. They made their necks stiff. They did worse than their fathers."
27"So you will speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You will call to them, but they will not answer you."
28"But you shall say to them, 'This is a nation that does not obey the voice of the LORD their God, and will not take correction. Truth has perished, and is cut off from their mouth."
29'Cut off your hair, Jerusalem, and throw it away. Raise a song of mourning on the high places, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned the generation he is angry with.
30'For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the LORD. They have set up their detestable things in the house which is called by my name, and made it unclean.
31'And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire. I never commanded this, and it never came into my mind.
32'So look, the days are coming, says the LORD, when it will no longer be called Tophet, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter. For they will bury in Tophet, until there is no room left.
33'And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth, and no one will frighten them away.