You, Pashhur, and all your household ¹  will go into exile in Babylon. You will die there and you will be buried there. The same thing will happen to all your friends to whom you have prophesied lies.’” ² 

Lord, you coerced me into being a prophet, and I allowed you to do it. You overcame my resistance and prevailed over me. ¹  Now I have become a constant laughingstock. Everyone ridicules me.

For whenever I prophesy, ¹  I must cry out, ²  “Violence and destruction are coming!” ³  This message from the Lord ⁴  has made me an object of continual insults and derision.

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.

O Lord who rules over all, ¹  you test and prove the righteous. You see into people’s hearts and minds. ²  Pay them back for what they have done because I trust you to vindicate my cause.

May that man be like the cities ¹  that the Lord destroyed without showing any mercy. May he hear a cry of distress in the morning and a battle cry at noon.

People of Jerusalem, ¹  go up to Lebanon and cry out in mourning. Go to the land of Bashan and cry out loudly. Cry out in mourning from the mountains of Moab. ²  For your allies ³  have all been defeated.

The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has fully carried out his intended purposes. ¹  In days to come ²  you people will come to understand this clearly. ³ 

Why do you brag about your great power? Your power is ebbing away, ¹  you rebellious people of Ammon, ²  who trust in your riches and say, ‘Who would dare to attack us?’

ר (Resh) Look, O Lord! I am distressed; ¹  my stomach is in knots! ²  My heart is pounding ³  inside me. Yes, I was terribly rebellious! ⁴  Out in the street the sword bereaves a mother of her children; ⁵  Inside the house death is present. ⁶ 

ר (Resh) Look, O Lord! Consider! ¹  Whom have you ever afflicted ²  like this? Should women eat their offspring, ³  their healthy infants? ⁴  Should priest and prophet be killed in the Lord’s ⁵  sanctuary?

ר (Resh) Our very life breath – the Lord’s anointed king ¹  – was caught in their traps, ²  of whom we thought, ³  “Under his protection ⁴  we will survive among the nations.”

Wherever the spirit ¹  would go, they would go, ²  and the wheels would rise up beside them because the spirit ³  of the living being was in the wheel.

They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride, ¹  and with it they made their abominable images – their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them.

Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own son or daughter; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness.

“‘You took your sons and your daughters whom you bore to me and you sacrificed them ¹  as food for the idols to eat. As if your prostitution not enough,

I will throw my net over him and he will be caught in my snare; I will bring him to Babylon and judge him there because of the unfaithfulness he committed against me.

In the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month, ¹  some of the elders ²  of Israel came to seek ³  the Lord, and they sat down in front of me.

I said to them, “Each of you must get rid of the detestable idols you keep before you, ¹  and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

I also gave them my Sabbaths ¹  as a reminder of our relationship, ²  so that they would know that I, the Lord, sanctify them. ³