How deserted will that once-famous city be, that city that was once filled with joy!

Your priests did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those responsible for teaching my law did not really know me. Your rulers rebelled against me. Your prophets prophesied in the name of the god Baal. They all worshiped idols that could not help them.

Do not build houses. Do not plant crops. Do not plant a vineyard or own one. Live in tents all your lives. If you do these things you will live a long time in the land that you wander about on.’

I answered, “Oh, Lord God, I really do not know how to speak well enough for that, for I am too young.”

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!

“It did no good for me to punish your people. They did not respond to such correction. You slaughtered your prophets like a voracious lion.”

All this will happen because the Lord said, “The whole land will be desolate; however, I will not completely destroy it.

Yet even then I will not completely destroy you,” says the Lord.

The Lord said, “I appointed prophets as watchmen to warn you, saying: ‘Pay attention to the warning sound of the trumpet!’” But they said, “We will not pay attention!”

The fiery bellows of judgment burn fiercely. But there is too much dross to be removed. The process of refining them has proved useless. The wicked have not been purged.

Not one of them will survive. I will bring disaster on those men from Anathoth who threatened you. A day of reckoning is coming for them.”

My people will sow wheat, but will harvest weeds. They will work until they are exhausted, but will get nothing from it. They will be disappointed in their harvests because the Lord will take them away in his fierce anger.

But I will completely uproot and destroy any of those nations that will not pay heed,’” says the Lord.

They are dismayed because the ground is cracked because there has been no rain in the land. The farmers, too, are dismayed and bury their faces in their hands.

Even the doe abandons her newborn fawn in the field because there is no grass.

I will give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder. I will give it away free of charge for the sins you have committed throughout your land.

I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about. For my anger is like a fire that will burn against you.”

I did not spend my time in the company of other people, laughing and having a good time. I stayed to myself because I felt obligated to you and because I was filled with anger at what they had done.

“Do not get married and do not have children here in this land.

For he did not kill me before I came from the womb, making my pregnant mother’s womb my grave forever.