Jeremiah Questions the Lord

¹“Lord, if I argued my case with you, you would prove to be right. Yet I must question you about matters of justice. Why are the wicked so prosperous? Why do dishonest people succeed?

²You plant them, and they take root; they grow and bear fruit. They always speak well of you, yet they do not really care about you.

³But, Lord, you know me; you see what I do and how I love you. Drag these evil people away like sheep to be butchered; guard them until it is time for them to be slaughtered.

⁴How long will our land be dry, and the grass in every field be withered? Animals and birds are dying because of the wickedness of our people, people who say, ‘God doesn't see what we are doing.’”

⁵The Lord said, “Jeremiah, if you get tired racing against people, how can you race against horses? If you can't even stand up in open country, how will you manage in the jungle by the Jordan?

⁶Even your relatives, members of your own family, have betrayed you; they join in the attacks against you. Do not trust them, even though they speak friendly words.”

The Lord's Sorrow because of His People

⁷The Lord says, “I have abandoned Israel; I have rejected my chosen nation. I have given the people I love into the power of their enemies.

⁸My chosen people have turned against me; like a lion in the forest they have roared at me, and so I hate them.

⁹My chosen people are like a bird attacked from all sides by hawks. Call the wild animals to come and join in the feast!

¹⁰Many foreign rulers have destroyed my vineyard; they have trampled down my fields; they have turned my lovely land into a desert.

¹¹They have made it a wasteland; it lies desolate before me. The whole land has become a desert, and no one cares.

¹²Across all the desert highlands people have come to plunder. I have sent war to destroy the entire land; no one can live in peace.

¹³My people planted wheat, but gathered weeds; they have worked hard, but got nothing for it. Because of my fierce anger their crops have failed.”

The Lord's Promise to Israel's Neighbors

¹⁴The Lord says, “I have something to say about Israel's neighbors who have ruined the land I gave to my people Israel. I will take those wicked people away from their countries like an uprooted plant, and I will rescue Judah from them.

¹⁵But after I have taken them away, I will have mercy on them; I will bring each nation back to its own land and to its own country.

¹⁶If with all their hearts they will accept the religion of my people and will swear, ‘As the Lord lives’—as they once taught my people to swear by Baal—then they will also be a part of my people and will prosper.

¹⁷But if any nation will not obey, then I will completely uproot it and destroy it. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

The Linen Shorts

¹The Lord told me to go and buy myself some linen shorts and to put them on; but he told me not to put them in water.

²So I bought them and put them on.

³Then the Lord spoke to me again and said,

⁴“Go to the Euphrates River and hide the shorts in a hole in the rocks.”

⁵So I went and hid them near the Euphrates.

⁶Some time later the Lord told me to go back to the Euphrates and get the shorts.

⁷So I went back, and when I found the place where I had hidden them, I saw that they were ruined and were no longer any good.

⁸Then the Lord spoke to me again. He said,

⁹“This is how I will destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

¹⁰These evil people have refused to obey me. They have been as stubborn and wicked as ever, and have worshiped and served other gods. So then, they will become like these shorts that are no longer any good.

¹¹Just as shorts fit tightly around the waist, so I intended all the people of Israel and Judah to hold tightly to me. I did this so that they would be my people and would bring praise and honor to my name; but they would not obey me.”

The Wine Jar

¹²The Lord God said to me, “Jeremiah, tell the people of Israel that every wine jar should be filled with wine. They will answer that they know every wine jar should be filled with wine.

¹³Then tell them that I, the Lord, am going to fill the people in this land with wine until they are drunk: the kings, who are David's descendants, the priests, the prophets, and all the people of Jerusalem.

¹⁴Then I will smash them like jars against one another, old and young alike. No pity, compassion, or mercy will stop me from killing them.”

Jeremiah Warns against Pride

¹⁵People of Israel, the Lord has spoken! Be humble and listen to him.

¹⁶Honor the Lord, your God, before he brings darkness, and you stumble on the mountains; before he turns into deep darkness the light you hoped for.

¹⁷If you will not listen, I will cry in secret because of your pride; I will cry bitterly, and my tears will flow because the Lord's people have been taken away as captives.

¹⁸The Lord said to me, “Tell the king and his mother to come down from their thrones, because their beautiful crowns have fallen from their heads.

¹⁹The towns of southern Judah are under siege; no one can get through to them. All the people of Judah have been taken away into exile.”

²⁰Jerusalem, look! Your enemies are coming down from the north! Where are the people entrusted to your care, your people you were so proud of

²¹What will you say when people you thought were your friends conquer you and rule over you? You will be in pain like a woman giving birth.

²²If you ask why all this has happened to you—why your clothes have been torn off and you have been raped—it is because your sin is so terrible.

²³Can people change the color of their skin, or a leopard remove its spots? If they could, then you that do nothing but evil could learn to do what is right.

²⁴The Lord will scatter you like straw that is blown away by the desert wind.

²⁵He has said that this will be your fate. This is what he has decided to do with you, because you have forgotten him and have trusted in false gods.

²⁶The Lord himself will strip off your clothes and expose you to shame.

²⁷He has seen you do the things he hates. He has seen you go after pagan gods on the hills and in the fields, like a man lusting after his neighbor's wife or like a stallion after a mare. People of Jerusalem, you are doomed! When will you ever be pure?

¹Next, the man took me into the central room, the Holy Place. He measured the passageway into it: it was 10 feet deep

²and 18 feet wide, with walls 8 feet thick on either side. He measured the room itself: it was 68 feet long and 34 feet wide.

³Then he went to the innermost room. He measured the passageway into it: it was 3 feet deep and 10 feet wide, with walls on either side 12 feet thick.

⁴He measured the room itself, and it was 34 feet square. This room was beyond the central room. Then he said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place.”

The Rooms Built against the Temple Walls

⁵The man measured the thickness of the inner wall of the Temple building, and it was 10 feet. Against this wall, all around the Temple, was a series of small rooms 7 feet wide.

⁶These rooms were in three stories, with thirty rooms on each floor. The Temple's outer wall on each floor was thinner than on the floor below, so that the rooms could rest on the wall without being anchored into it.

⁷And so the Temple walls, when seen from the outside, seemed to have the same thickness all the way to the top. Against the Temple's outer wall, on the outside of the rooms, two wide stairways were built, so that it was possible to go from the lower story to the middle and the upper stories.

^8-11The outside wall of these rooms was 8 feet thick; there was one door into the rooms on the north side of the Temple, and one into those on the south side. I saw that there was a terrace 8 feet wide around the Temple; it was 10 feet above the ground and it was level with the foundation of the rooms by the Temple walls. Between the terrace and the buildings used by the priests there was an open space 34 feet across, along the sides of the Temple.

The Building on the West

¹²At the far end of the open space on the west side of the Temple there was a building 150 feet long and 116 feet wide; its walls were 9 feet thick all around.

The Total Measurements of the Temple Building

¹³The man measured the outside of the Temple, and it was 168 feet long. And from the back of the Temple, across the open space to the far side of the building to the west, the distance was also 168 feet.

¹⁴The distance across the front of the Temple, including the open space on either side, was also 168 feet.

Details of the Temple Building

¹⁵He measured the length of the building to the west, including its galleries on both sides, and it was also 168 feet. The entrance room of the Temple, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place

¹⁶were all paneled with wood from the floor to the windows. These windows could be covered.

¹⁷The inside walls of the Temple, up as high as above the doors, were completely covered with carvings

¹⁸of palm trees and winged creatures. Palm trees alternated with creatures, one following the other, all the way around the room. Each creature had two faces:

¹⁹a human face that was turned toward the palm tree on one side, and a lion's face that was turned toward the tree on the other side. It was like this all around the wall,

²⁰from the floor to above the doors.

The Wooden Altar

²¹The doorposts of the Holy Place were square. In front of the entrance of the Most Holy Place there was something that looked like

²²a wooden altar. It was 5 feet high and 4 feet wide. Its corner posts, its base, and its sides were all made of wood. The man said to me, “This is the table which stands in the presence of the Lord.”

The Doors

²³There was a door at the end of the passageway to the Holy Place and one also at the end of the passageway to the Most Holy Place.

²⁴They were double doors that swung open in the middle.

²⁵There were palm trees and winged creatures carved on the doors of the Holy Place, just as there were on the walls. And there was a wooden covering over the outside of the doorway of the entrance room.

²⁶At the sides of this room there were windows, and the walls were decorated with palm trees.

Two Buildings Near the Temple

¹Then the man took me into the outer courtyard and led me to a building on the north side of the Temple, not far from the building at the west end of the Temple.

²This building was 168 feet long and 84 feet wide.

³On one side it faced the space 34 feet wide which was alongside the Temple, and on the other side it faced the pavement of the outer courtyard. It was built on three levels, each one set further back than the one below it.

⁴Along the north side of this building was a passageway 16 feet wide and 168 feet long, with entrances on that side.

⁵The rooms at the upper level of the building were narrower than those at the middle and lower levels because they were set further back.

⁶The rooms at all three levels were on terraces and were not supported by columns like the other buildings in the courtyard.

^7-8At the lower level the outer wall of the building was solid for 84 feet, half its length; and there were rooms in the remaining 84 feet. At the top level there were rooms in the entire length of the building.

^9-10Below these rooms at the east end of the building, where the wall of the courtyard began, there was an entrance into the outer courtyard. At the south side of the Temple there was an identical building not far from the building at the west end of the Temple.

¹¹In front of the rooms there was a passageway just like the one on the north side. It had the same measurements, the same design, and the same kind of entrances.

¹²There was a door under the rooms on the south side of the building, at the east end where the wall began.

¹³The man said to me, “Both these buildings are holy. In them the priests who enter the Lord's presence eat the holiest offerings. Because the rooms are holy, the priests will place the holiest offerings there: the offerings of grain and the sacrifices offered for sin or as repayment offerings.

¹⁴When priests have been in the Temple and want to go to the outer courtyard, they must leave in these rooms the holy clothing they wore while serving the Lord. They must put on other clothes before going out to the area where the people gather.”

The Measurements of the Temple Area

¹⁵When the man had finished measuring inside the Temple area, he took me out through the east gate and then measured the outside of the area.

¹⁶He took the measuring rod and measured the east side, and it was 840 feet.

^17-19Then he measured the north side, the south side, and the west side; each side had the same length, 840 feet,

²⁰so that the wall enclosed a square 840 feet on each side. The wall served to separate what was holy from what was not.

⁹The Lord hates the ways of evil people, but loves those who do what is right.

¹⁰If you do what is wrong, you will be severely punished; you will die if you do not let yourself be corrected.

¹¹Not even the world of the dead can keep the Lord from knowing what is there; how then can we hide our thoughts from God?

¹²Conceited people do not like to be corrected; they never ask for advice from those who are wiser.