Can people make their own gods? No, what they make are not gods at all.”

Has a nation ever changed its gods (even though they are not really gods at all)? But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, for a god that cannot help them at all!

The answer will come back, “It is because they broke their covenant with the Lord their God and worshiped and served other gods.”

The Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, “I will punish Amon, the god of Thebes. I will punish Egypt, its gods, and its kings. I will punish Pharaoh and all who trust in him.

Then you will again be my people and I will be your God.

They will be my people, and I will be their God.

“The Lord God of Israel has a message for you, Baruch.

You are making a fatal mistake. For you sent me to the Lord your God and asked me, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us. Tell us what the Lord our God says and we will do it.’

Do you people think that I am some local deity and not the transcendent God?” the Lord asks.

The Lord is the only true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. When he shows his anger the earth shakes. None of the nations can stand up to his fury.

But where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them save you when you are in trouble. The sad fact is that you have as many gods as you have towns, Judah.

Jeremiah finished telling all the people all these things the Lord their God had sent him to tell them.

“The Lord God of Israel says, ‘Write everything that I am about to tell you in a scroll.

“I am the Lord, the God of all humankind. There is, indeed, nothing too difficult for me.

Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

“You must not disobey the Lord your God by saying, ‘We will not stay in this land.’

We know our noisy worship of false gods on the hills and mountains did not help us. We know that the Lord our God is the only one who can deliver Israel.

You steal. You murder. You commit adultery. You lie when you swear on oath. You sacrifice to the god Baal. You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known.

You must no longer say that the Lord’s message is burdensome. For what is ‘burdensome’ really pertains to what a person himself says. You are misrepresenting the words of our God, the living God, the Lord who rules over all.

“A noise is heard on the hilltops. It is the sound of the people of Israel crying and pleading to their gods. Indeed they have followed sinful ways; they have forgotten to be true to the Lord their God.