Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
Jeremiah 7
At the temple gate
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
“Stand at the gate of the LORD’s house and proclaim this word there: ‘Hear the LORD’s word, all you of Judah who enter these gates to bow before the LORD.
This is what the LORD of hosts, Israel’s God, says: Put your ways and deeds right, and I will let you live in this place.
Do not trust deceptive words: “The LORD’s temple! The LORD’s temple! These are the LORD’s temple!”
If you truly put your ways and deeds right, if you truly do justice between one person and another, if you do not oppress the resident foreigner, the orphan or the widow, do not shed innocent blood in this place, and do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors from long ago and forever.
But look, you trust deceptive words that cannot help.
Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn offerings to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, then come and stand before me in this house that bears my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these offensive things?
Has this house that bears my name become a robbers’ den in your eyes? Look, I too have seen it,’ declares the LORD.
‘Go now to my place at Shiloh, where I first made my name dwell. See what I did to it because of my people Israel’s wickedness.
Now, because you have done all these things,’ declares the LORD, ‘and because I spoke to you persistently but you did not listen, called you but you did not answer, I will do to the house that bears my name, the house you trust, and to the place I gave you and your ancestors, what I did to Shiloh.
I will cast you out of my presence, just as I cast out all your brothers, all Ephraim’s offspring.’
Worship and refusal
“As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not raise a cry or prayer for them; do not intercede with me, for I will not listen to you.
Do you not see what they are doing in Judah’s cities and Jerusalem’s streets?
The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven. They pour drink offerings to other gods to provoke me.
Is it me they provoke?” declares the LORD. “Is it not themselves, bringing shame upon their own faces?
“So this is what the Lord GOD says: Look, my anger and fury will pour over this place—over people and animals, over field trees and the ground’s fruit. It will burn and will not be quenched.
“This is what the LORD of hosts, Israel’s God, says: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat!
For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them about burnt offerings and sacrifices.
But this is what I commanded them: Listen to my voice, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in every way I command you, so it may go well for you.
Yet they did not listen or incline their ears. They followed their own plans and the stubbornness of their evil hearts; they went backward, not forward.
From the day your ancestors left Egypt until today, I have sent you all my servants the prophets, day after day, persistently sending them.
But they did not listen to me or incline their ears. They stiffened their necks and did worse than their ancestors.
“Tell them all these words, but they will not listen to you. Call to them, but they will not answer you.
Say to them: This is the nation that did not listen to the LORD its God or accept discipline. Faithfulness has perished; it has been cut off from their mouths.
The valley of slaughter
Cut off your hair and throw it away;
raise a lament on the bare heights,
for the LORD has rejected and abandoned
the generation that aroused his wrath.
“For the people of Judah have done evil in my eyes,” declares the LORD. “They have placed their offensive things in the house that bears my name, defiling it.
They built Topheth’s high places in the Valley of Ben-hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in fire—something I did not command and that never entered my mind.
So look, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. They will bury people at Topheth for lack of room elsewhere.
The corpses of this people will become food for the birds of the heavens and the animals of the earth, with no one to frighten them away.
I will silence in Judah’s cities and Jerusalem’s streets the sound of joy and gladness, the voice of bridegroom and bride, for the land will become a ruin.”