To whom can you compare God? To what image can you liken him?

They help one another; one says to the other, ‘Be strong!’

The father of your nation sinned; your spokesmen rebelled against me.

Who forms a god and casts an idol that will prove worthless?

Yes, you are a God who keeps hidden, O God of Israel, deliverer!

For this is what the Lord says, the one who created the sky – he is the true God, the one who formed the earth and made it; he established it, he did not create it without order, he formed it to be inhabited – “I am the Lord, I have no peer.

Listen to me, you stubborn people, you who distance yourself from doing what is right.

“Zion said, ‘The Lord has abandoned me, the sovereign master has forgotten me.’

Why do you forget the Lord, who made you, who stretched out the sky and founded the earth? Why do you constantly tremble all day long at the anger of the oppressor, when he makes plans to destroy? Where is the anger of the oppressor?

So listen to this, oppressed one, who is drunk, but not from wine!

For messengers are coming, heralding disaster, from the city of Dan and from the hills of Ephraim.

Are they ashamed because they have done such disgusting things? No, they are not at all ashamed! They do not even know how to blush! So they will die just like others have died. They will be brought to ruin when I punish them, says the Lord.

Gather your belongings together and prepare to leave the land, you people of Jerusalem who are being besieged.

Those are the terms that I charged your ancestors to keep when I brought them out of Egypt, that place which was like an iron-smelting furnace. I said at that time, “Obey me and carry out the terms of the agreement exactly as I commanded you. If you do, you will be my people and I will be your God.

So I went and buried them at Perath as the Lord had ordered me to do.

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah about the drought.

The people to whom they are prophesying will die through war and famine. Their bodies will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem and there will be no one to bury them. This will happen to the men and their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out on them the destruction they deserve.”

Their peaceful dwelling places will be laid waste by the fierce anger of the Lord.

I will fully satisfy the needs of those who are weary and fully refresh the souls of those who are faint.

Then they will say, ‘Under these conditions I can enjoy sweet sleep when I wake up and look around.’”