If grape pickers came to pick your grapes, would they not leave a few grapes behind? If robbers came at night, would they not pillage only what they needed?

“People of Babylonia, you plundered my people. That made you happy and glad. You frolic about like calves in a pasture. Your joyous sounds are like the neighs of a stallion.

“Listen! I am opposed to you, you proud city,” says the Lord God who rules over all. “Indeed, your day of reckoning has come, the time when I will punish you.

The king of Babylon will become paralyzed with fear when he hears news of their coming. Anguish will grip him, agony like that of a woman giving birth to a baby.

You who have escaped the sword, go, do not delay. Remember the Lord in a faraway land. Think about Jerusalem.

I will see to it that all the Judean remnant that was determined to go and live in the land of Egypt will be destroyed. Here in the land of Egypt they will fall in battle or perish from starvation. People of every class will die in war or from starvation. They will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example of those who have been cursed and that people use in pronouncing a curse.

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.

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.

Let us acknowledge our shame. Let us bear the disgrace that we deserve. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, both we and our ancestors. From earliest times to this very day we have not obeyed the Lord our God.’

“When this happens,” says the Lord, “the king and his officials will lose their courage. The priests will be struck with horror, and the prophets will be speechless in astonishment.”

All of this is because the Lord who rules over all has said: ‘Cut down the trees around Jerusalem and build up a siege ramp against its walls. This is the city which is to be punished. Nothing but oppression happens in it.

So tell them: ‘This is a nation that has not obeyed the Lord their God and has not accepted correction. Faithfulness is nowhere to be found in it. These people do not even profess it anymore.

I have listened to them very carefully, but they do not speak honestly. None of them regrets the evil he has done. None of them says, “I have done wrong!” All of them persist in their own wayward course like a horse charging recklessly into battle.

For the sound of wailing is soon to be heard in Zion. They will wail, ‘We are utterly ruined! We are completely disgraced! For our houses have been torn down and we must leave our land.’”

The Lord, who is the inheritance of Jacob’s descendants, is not like them. He is the one who created everything. And the people of Israel are those he claims as his own. He is known as the Lord who rules over all.”

As a matter of fact, even your own brothers and the members of your own family have betrayed you too. Even they have plotted to do away with you. So do not trust them even when they say kind things to you.

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.

These wicked people refuse to obey what I have said. They follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts and pay allegiance to other gods by worshiping and serving them. So they will become just like these linen shorts which are good for nothing.

You will probably ask yourself, ‘Why have these things happened to me? Why have I been treated like a disgraced adulteress whose skirt has been torn off and her limbs exposed?’ It is because you have sinned so much.

“Tell these people this, Jeremiah: ‘My eyes overflow with tears day and night without ceasing. For my people, my dear children, have suffered a crushing blow. They have suffered a serious wound.