Even your clothes are stained with the lifeblood of the poor who had not done anything wrong; you did not catch them breaking into your homes. ¹  Yet, in spite of all these things you have done, ² 

So, this is what the Lord says: ‘I will assuredly ¹  make these people stumble to their doom. ²  Parents and children will stumble and fall to their destruction. ³  Friends and neighbors will die.’

Then the Lord said, ¹  “As for you, Jeremiah, ²  do not pray for these people! Do not cry out to me or petition me on their behalf! Do not plead with me to save them, ³  because I will not listen to you.

Then the Lord said to me, ¹  “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not respond to you.

However, I will leave some of these wicked people alive and banish them to other places. But wherever these people who survive may go, they will wish they had died rather than lived,” ¹  says the Lord who rules over all. ² 

For the Lord says, “I will now throw out those who live in this land. I will bring so much trouble on them that they will actually feel it.” ¹ 

So, Jeremiah, ¹  do not pray for these people. Do not cry out to me or petition me on their behalf. Do not plead with me to save them. ²  For I will not listen to them when they call out to me for help when disaster strikes them.” ³ 

So the Lord who rules over all ¹  said, “I will surely ²  punish them! Their young men will be killed in battle. ³  Their sons and daughters will die of starvation.

A destructive army ¹  will come marching over the hilltops in the desert. For the Lord will use them as his destructive weapon ²  against ³  everyone from one end of the land to the other. No one will be safe. ⁴ 

The Lord said, “Jerusalem, ¹  I will surely send you away for your own good. I will surely ²  bring the enemy upon you in a time of trouble and distress.

No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother.

I will scatter them before their enemies like dust blowing in front of a burning east wind. I will turn my back on them and not look favorably on them ¹  when disaster strikes them.”

But I will punish you as your deeds deserve,’ says the Lord. ¹  ‘I will set fire to your palace; it will burn up everything around it.’” ² 

I will force you and your mother who gave you birth into exile. You will be exiled to ¹  a country where neither of you were born, and you will both die there.

So the paths they follow will be dark and slippery. They will stumble and fall headlong. For I will bring disaster on them. A day of reckoning is coming for them.” ¹  The Lord affirms it! ² 

I will punish any prophet, priest, or other person who says “The Lord’s message is burdensome.” ¹  I will punish both that person and his whole family.’” ² 

So ¹  I will carry you far off ²  and throw you away. I will send both you and the city I gave to you and to your ancestors out of my sight. ³ 

“‘But when the seventy years are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation ¹  for their sins. I will make the land of Babylon ²  an everlasting ruin. ³  I, the Lord, affirm it! ⁴ 

Maybe they will pay attention and each of them will stop living the evil way they do. ¹  If they do that, then I will forgo destroying them ²  as I had intended to do because of the wicked things they have been doing. ³ 

Do not listen to them, ¹  because their prophecies are lies. ²  Listening to them will only cause you ³  to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. ⁴