Jer 16, Jer 18 | ESV | STEP | The word of the Lord came to me:

1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. 3 For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them and the fathers who fathered them in this land: 4 ^aThey shall die of deadly diseases. ^bThey shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried. ^cThey shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. ^dThey shall perish by the sword and by famine, ^eand their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

5 “For thus says the Lord: ^fDo not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament or grieve for them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the Lord. 6 Both great and small shall die in this land. ^gThey shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them or ^hcut himself ⁱor make himself bald for them. 7 No one shall ^jbreak bread for the mourner, to comfort him for the dead, nor shall anyone give him the cup of consolation to drink for his father or his mother. 8 You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. 9 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ^kBehold, I will silence in this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

10 “And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ^l‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 then you shall say to them: ^m‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and ⁿhave gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, 12 and because ^oyou have done worse than your fathers, for behold, ^pevery one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. 13 Therefore ^qI will hurl you out of this land into ^ra land that neither you nor your fathers have known, ^sand there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

The Lord Will Restore Israel

14 ^t“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ^u‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ 15 but ^v‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel ^wout of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For ^xI will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers.

16 “Behold, ^yI am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out ^zof the clefts of the rocks. 17 For ^aamy eyes are on all their ways. ^abThey are not hidden from me, ^acnor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. 18 But first ^adI will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and ^aehave filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

19 ^afO Lord, my strength and my stronghold,
^agmy refuge in the day of trouble,
^ahto you shall the nations come
from the ends of the earth and say:
“Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies,
^aiworthless things in which there is no profit.
20 Can man make for himself ^ajgods?
Such are not gods!”
21 “Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that ^akmy name is the Lord.”

Jeremiah 18

The Potter and the Clay

1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise, and go down to ^althe potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 So I went down to ^amthe potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 And the vessel he was making of clay was ^anspoiled in the potter’s hand, and ^aohe reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, ^apcan I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. ^aqBehold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will ^arpluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, ^asturns from its evil, ^atI will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. 9 And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will ^aubuild and plant it, 10 and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. 11 Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. ^avReturn, every one from his evil way, and ^awamend your ways and your deeds.’

12 “But they say, ^ax‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to ^aythe stubbornness of his evil heart.’

13 “Therefore thus says the Lord:
^azAsk among the nations,
Who has heard the like of this?
The virgin Israel
has done ^baa very horrible thing.
14 Does the snow of Lebanon leave
the crags of Sirion? ^{▼▼Hebrew of the field}
Do the mountain waters run dry, ^{▼▼Hebrew Are foreign waters plucked up}
the cold flowing streams?
15 ^bdBut my people have forgotten me;
they make offerings to ^befalse gods;
they made them stumble in their ways,
^bfin the ancient roads,
and to walk into side roads,
^bgnot the highway,
16 making their land ^bha horror,
a thing ^bito be hissed at forever.
^bjEveryone who passes by it is horrified
^bkand shakes his head.
17 ^blLike the east wind ^bmI will scatter them
before the enemy.
^bnI will show them my back, not my face,
in the day of their calamity.”
18 Then they said, ^bo“Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah, ^bpfor the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. ^bqCome, let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not pay attention to any of his words.”

19 Hear me, O Lord,
and ^brlisten to the voice of my adversaries.
20 ^bsShould good be repaid with evil?
Yet ^btthey have dug a pit for my life.
^buRemember how I stood before you
to speak good for them,
to turn away your wrath from them.
21 Therefore ^bvdeliver up their children to famine;
give them over to the power of the sword;
let their wives become childless ^bwand widowed.
May their men meet death by pestilence,
their youths be struck down by the sword in battle.
22 ^bxMay a cry be heard from their houses,
when you bring the plunderer suddenly upon them!
For ^bythey have dug a pit to take me
^bzand laid snares for my feet.
23 Yet ^cayou, O Lord, know
all their plotting to kill me.
^cbForgive not their iniquity,
nor blot out their sin from your sight.
Let them be overthrown before you;
deal with them in the time of your anger.