Jeremiah 9:12-22

Ruin and Exile Threatened

¹² Who is the man so wise that he can understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? ¹³ And the Lord says: "Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, ¹⁴ but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them. ¹⁵ Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will feed this people with bitter food, and give them poisonous water to drink. ¹⁶ I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them." ¹⁷ Thus says the Lord of hosts: "Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skillful women to come; ¹⁸ let them make haste and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water. ¹⁹ For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: 'How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.'" ²⁰ Hear, O women, the word of the Lord, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a lament, and each to her neighbor a dirge. ²¹ For death has come up into our windows; it has entered our palaces, cutting off the children from the streets and the young men from the squares. ²² Speak, "Thus declares the Lord: 'The dead bodies of men shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves after the reaper, and none shall gather them.'"