Then they said to one another, ¹  “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” ²  (They had brick instead of stone and tar ³  instead of mortar.) ⁴ 

They made their lives bitter ¹  by ²  hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service ³  in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous. ⁴ 

If you should pound ¹  the fool in the mortar among the grain ²  with the pestle, his foolishness would not depart from him. ³ 

And the people went about and gathered it, and ground it with mills or pounded it in mortars; they baked it in pans and made cakes of it. It tasted like fresh olive oil. ¹ 

Draw yourselves water for a siege! ¹  Strengthen your fortifications! Trample the mud ²  and tread the clay! Make mud bricks to strengthen your walls! ³ 

I have stirred up one out of the north ¹  and he advances, one from the eastern horizon who prays in my name. ²  He steps on ³  rulers as if they were clay, like a potter treading the clay.

Wail, you who live in the market district, ¹  for all the merchants ²  will disappear ³  and those who count money ⁴  will be removed. ⁵ 

“Take some large stones ¹  and bury them in the mortar of the clay pavement ²  at the entrance of Pharaoh’s residence ³  here in Tahpanhes. Do it while the people of Judah present there are watching. ⁴ 

They are then to take other stones and replace those stones, ¹  and he is to take other plaster and replaster the house.

“‘This is because they have led my people astray saying, “All is well,” ¹  when things are not well. When anyone builds a wall without mortar, ²  they coat it with whitewash.

When the wall has collapsed, people will ask you, “Where is the whitewash you coated it with?”

Then he is to have the house scraped ¹  all around on the inside, ²  and the plaster ³  which is scraped off ⁴  must be dumped outside the city ⁵  into an unclean place.

He must tear down the house, ¹  its stones, its wood, and all the plaster of the house, and bring all of it ²  outside the city to an unclean place.

Tell the ones who coat it with whitewash that it will fall. When there is a deluge of rain, hailstones ¹  will fall and a violent wind will break out. ² 

I will vent my rage against the wall, and against those who coated it with whitewash. Then I will say to you, “The wall is no more and those who whitewashed it are no more –

I will break down the wall you coated with whitewash and knock it to the ground so that its foundation is exposed. When it falls you will be destroyed beneath it, ¹  and you will know that I am the Lord.

Her prophets coat their messages with whitewash. ¹  They see false visions and announce lying omens for them, saying, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.