Jeremiah 8

⁴You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord:

When people fall, do they not get up again?

If they go astray, do they not turn back?

⁵Why then has this people turned away

in perpetual backsliding?

They have held fast to deceit,

they have refused to return.

⁶I have given heed and listened,

but they do not speak honestly;

no one repents of wickedness,

saying, “What have I done!”

All of them turn to their own course,

like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

⁷Even the stork in the heavens

knows its times;

and the turtledove, swallow, and crane

observe the time of their coming;

but my people do not know

the ordinance of the Lord.

⁸How can you say, “We are wise,

and the law of the Lord is with us,”

when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes

has made it into a lie?

⁹The wise shall be put to shame,

they shall be dismayed and taken;

since they have rejected the word of the Lord,

what wisdom is in them?

¹⁰Therefore I will give their wives to others

and their fields to conquerors,

because from the least to the greatest

everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

from prophet to priest

everyone deals falsely.

¹¹They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,

saying, “Peace, peace,”

when there is no peace.

¹²They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;

yet they were not at all ashamed,

they did not know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

says the Lord.

¹³When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord,

there are no grapes on the vine,

nor figs on the fig tree;

even the leaves are withered,

and what I gave them has passed away from them.

¹⁴Why do we sit still?

Gather together, let us go into the fortified cities

and perish there;

for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish,

and has given us poisoned water to drink,

because we have sinned against the Lord.

¹⁵We look for peace, but find no good,

for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

¹⁶The snorting of their horses is heard from Dan;

at the sound of the neighing of their stallions

the whole land quakes.

They come and devour the land and all that fills it,

the city and those who live in it.

¹⁷See, I am letting snakes loose among you,

adders that cannot be charmed,

and they shall bite you,

says the Lord.

¹⁸My joy is gone, grief is upon me,

my heart is sick.

¹⁹Hark, the cry of my poor people

from far and wide in the land:

“Is the Lord not in Zion?

Is her King not in her?”

(“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,

with their foreign idols?”)

²⁰“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,

and we are not saved.”

²¹For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,

I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

²²Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has the health of my poor people

not been restored?