“Hazor will become a permanent wasteland, a place where only jackals live. ¹  No one will live there. No human being will settle in it.” ² 

Therefore desert creatures and jackals will live there. Ostriches ¹  will dwell in it too. ²  But no people will ever live there again. No one will dwell there for all time to come. ³ 

The towns of Babylonia have become heaps of ruins. She has become a dry and barren desert. No one lives in those towns any more. No one even passes through them. ¹ 

Even now you say to me, ‘You are my father! ¹  You have been my faithful companion ever since I was young.

“They cry, ¹  ‘Harvest time has come and gone, and the summer is over, ²  and still we have not been delivered.’

He decorates it with overlays of silver and gold. He uses hammer and nails to fasten it ¹  together so that it will not fall over.

“‘Do not go to a house where people are feasting and sit down to eat and drink with them either.

Can people make their own gods? No, what they make are not gods at all.” ¹ 

Do you people think ¹  that I am some local deity and not the transcendent God?” ²  the Lord asks. ³ 

You should have reprimanded Jeremiah from Anathoth who is pretending to be a prophet among you! ¹ 

Why will your soldiers ¹  be defeated? ²  They will not stand because I, the Lord, will thrust ³  them down.

How deserted will that once-famous city ¹  be, that city that was once filled with ²  joy! ³ 

They did not ask: ‘Where is the Lord who delivered us out of Egypt, who brought us through the wilderness, through a land of desert sands and rift valleys, through a land of drought and deep darkness, ¹  through a land in which no one travels, and where no one lives?’ ² 

Your priests ¹  did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’ ²  Those responsible for teaching my law ³  did not really know me. ⁴  Your rulers rebelled against me. Your prophets prophesied in the name of the god Baal. ⁵  They all worshiped idols that could not help them. ⁶ 

Such idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field. They cannot talk. They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them because they cannot hurt you. And they do not have any power to help you.” ¹ 

But they did not listen to me or pay any attention to me! Each one of them followed the stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart. So I brought on them all the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its terms as I commanded them to do.’” ¹ 

Then the Lord said to me, “Those prophets are prophesying lies while claiming my authority! ¹  I did not send them. I did not commission them. ²  I did not speak to them. They are prophesying to these people false visions, worthless predictions, ³  and the delusions of their own mind.

They will be like a tree planted near a stream whose roots spread out toward the water. It has nothing to fear when the heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no need to be concerned in a year of drought. It does not stop bearing fruit.

They have built places here ¹  for worship of the god Baal so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices ²  are something I never commanded them to make! They are something I never told them to do! Indeed, such a thing never even entered my mind!

But the Lord is with me to help me like an awe-inspiring warrior. ¹  Therefore those who persecute me will fail and will not prevail over me. They will be thoroughly disgraced because they did not succeed. Their disgrace will never be forgotten.