Do not let your mouth cause you ¹  to sin, and do not tell the priest, ²  “It was a mistake!” ³  Why make God angry at you ⁴  so that he would destroy the work of your hands?”

To every man whom God has given wealth, and possessions, he has also given him the ability ¹  to eat from them, to receive his reward and to find enjoyment in his toil; these things ²  are the gift of God.

I discovered this: ¹  More bitter than death is the kind of ²  woman ³  who is like a hunter’s snare; ⁴  her heart is like a hunter’s net and her hands are like prison chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is captured by her.

For ¹  the burial place is already prepared; ²  it has been made deep and wide for the king. ³  The firewood is piled high on it. ⁴  The Lord’s breath, like a stream flowing with brimstone, will ignite it.

When Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, you have no doubt seen what wayward Israel has done. ¹  You have seen how she went up to every high hill and under every green tree to give herself like a prostitute to other gods. ² 

She also saw ¹  that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods. ²  Even after her unfaithful sister Judah had seen this, ³  she still was not afraid, and she too went and gave herself like a prostitute to other gods. ⁴ 

In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah ¹  concerning all the people of Judah. (That was the same as the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon.) ² 

The Lord told Jeremiah, ¹  “Tell Baruch, ²  ‘The Lord says, “I am about to tear down what I have built and to uproot what I have planted. I will do this throughout the whole earth. ³ 

Shout the battle cry from all around the city. She will throw up her hands in surrender. ¹  Her towers ²  will fall. Her walls will be torn down. Because I, the Lord, am wreaking revenge, ³  take out your vengeance on her! Do to her as she has done!

“Sharpen ¹  your arrows! Fill your quivers! ²  The Lord will arouse a spirit of hostility in ³  the kings of Media. ⁴  For he intends to destroy Babylonia. For that is how the Lord will get his revenge – how he will get his revenge for the Babylonians’ destruction of his temple. ⁵ 

On the tenth ¹  day of the fifth month, ²  in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard ³  who served ⁴  the king of Babylon, arrived in Jerusalem.

Then for your part take an iron frying pan ¹  and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Set your face toward it. It is to be under siege; you are to besiege it. This is a sign ²  for the house of Israel.

“Son of man, your brothers, ¹  your relatives, ²  and the whole house of Israel, all of them are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem ³  have said, ‘They have gone ⁴  far away from the Lord; to us this land has been given as a possession.’

The person who sins is the one who will die. A son will not suffer ¹  for his father’s iniquity, and a father will not suffer ²  for his son’s iniquity; the righteous person will be judged according to his righteousness, and the wicked person according to his wickedness. ³ 

On that day I swore ¹  to bring them out of the land of Egypt to a land which I had picked out ²  for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, ³  the most beautiful of all lands.

I also swore ¹  to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them to the land I had given them – a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands.

“And you, son of man, prophesy, and clap your hands together. Let the sword strike twice, even three times! It is a sword for slaughter, a sword for the great slaughter surrounding them.

They will sing this lament over you: ¹  “‘How you have perished – you have vanished ²  from the seas, O renowned city, once mighty in the sea, she and her inhabitants, who spread their terror! ³ 

“‘On that day I will assign Gog a grave in Israel. It will be the valley of those who travel east of the sea; it will block the way of the travelers. There they will bury Gog and all his horde; they will call it the valley of Hamon-Gog. ¹ 

If you don’t inform me of the dream, there is only one thing that is going to happen to you. ¹  For you have agreed among yourselves to report to me something false and deceitful ²  until such time as things might change. So tell me the dream, and I will have confidence ³  that you can disclose its interpretation.”