For our leaders are stupid. They have not sought the Lord’s advice. So they do not act wisely, and the people they are responsible for have all been scattered.

Lord, you have always been fair whenever I have complained to you. However, I would like to speak with you about the disposition of justice. Why are wicked people successful? Why do all dishonest people have such easy lives?

The people I call my own attack me like birds of prey or like hyenas. But other birds of prey are all around them. Let all the nations gather together like wild beasts. Let them come and destroy these people I call my own.

They will lay it waste. It will lie parched and empty before me. The whole land will be laid waste. But no one living in it will pay any heed.

So I went to Perath and dug up the shorts from the place where I had buried them. I found that they were ruined; they were good for nothing.

I will make all the people in all the kingdoms of the world horrified at what has happened to them because of what Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.”

For I see everything they do. Their wicked ways are not hidden from me. Their sin is not hidden away where I cannot see it.

You are the one in whom Israel may find hope. All who leave you will suffer shame. Those who turn away from you will be consigned to the nether world. For they have rejected you, the Lord, the fountain of life.

Do not carry any loads out of your houses or do any work on the Sabbath day. But observe the Sabbath day as a day set apart to the Lord, as I commanded your ancestors.

Then Jeremiah left Topheth where the Lord had sent him to give that prophecy. He went to the Lord’s temple and stood in its courtyard and called out to all the people.

For whenever I prophesy, I must cry out, “Violence and destruction are coming!” This message from the Lord has made me an object of continual insults and derision.

Then I myself will regather those of my people who are still alive from all the countries where I have driven them. I will bring them back to their homeland. They will greatly increase in number.

Here is what the Lord says concerning the false prophets: My heart and my mind are deeply disturbed. I tremble all over. I am like a drunk person, like a person who has had too much wine, because of the way the Lord and his holy word are being mistreated.

They continually say to those who reject what the Lord has said, ‘Things will go well for you!’ They say to all those who follow the stubborn inclinations of their own hearts, ‘Nothing bad will happen to you!’

Over and over again the Lord has sent his servants the prophets to you. But you have not listened or paid attention.

This whole area will become a desolate wasteland. These nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years.’

So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand. I made all the nations to whom he sent me drink the wine of his wrath.

The sounds of battle will resound to the ends of the earth. For the Lord will bring charges against the nations. He will pass judgment on all humankind and will hand the wicked over to be killed in war.’ The Lord so affirms it!

If you do not obey me, then I will do to this temple what I did to Shiloh. And I will make this city an example to be used in curses by people from all the nations on the earth.’”

The priests, the prophets, and all the people heard Jeremiah say these things in the Lord’s temple.