Jeremiah 17

17 ¹ Judah's sin is engraved with an iron pen, inscribed with a diamond point on the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars, ² while their children remember their altars and their Asherah poles beside the green trees on the high hills. ^a a v2 Asherah poles were carved wooden objects set up for the worship of Asherah, a Canaanite fertility goddess. ³ My mountain in the open country, your wealth and all your treasures I will hand over as plunder, your high places too, because of the sin throughout your territory. ⁴ By your own hand you will lose the inheritance I gave you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled a fire in my anger that will burn forever.

⁵ This is what our Father says: Cursed is the one who trusts in mere humans, who relies on human strength, and whose heart turns away from me. ⁶ He will be like a bush in the wasteland that never finds relief even when it comes, dwelling in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. ⁷ But blessed is the one who trusts in me, whose confidence is in me. ⁸ He will be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It has no fear when heat comes; its leaves stay green. It is not anxious in the year of drought and never stops bearing fruit. ⁹ The heart is more deceitful than anything else and beyond cure—who can understand it? ¹⁰ I, your Father, search the heart and test the mind, to repay each person according to their ways, according to what their deeds deserve. ¹¹ Like a partridge hatching eggs it did not lay is the one who gains riches unjustly. At midlife they will desert him, and in the end he will prove to be a fool.

¹² A glorious throne, exalted from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary. ¹³ Our Father, hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they have abandoned our Father, the spring of living water.

¹⁴ Heal me, my Father, and I will be healed; save me, and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise. ¹⁵ Look, they keep saying to me, "Where is the word of our Father? Let it come now!" ¹⁶ But I have not run away from being a shepherd in your service, nor have I longed for the day of despair. You know what passed my lips; it lay open before you. ¹⁷ Do not become a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of disaster. ¹⁸ Let my persecutors be put to shame, but not me; let them be shattered, but not me. Bring on them the day of disaster; shatter them with double destruction.

The Father Calls for Sabbath Faithfulness

¹⁹ This is what our Father said to me: Go and stand at the People's Gate, through which the kings of Judah come and go, and at all the gates of Jerusalem, ²⁰ and say to them: Hear the word of our Father, you kings of Judah and all Judah and all who live in Jerusalem and enter through these gates. ²¹ This is what our Father says: Be careful for the sake of your lives; do not carry a load on the Sabbath day or bring it through the gates of Jerusalem. ²² Do not carry a load out of your houses on the Sabbath day or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your ancestors. ²³ Yet they did not listen or pay attention; they stiffened their necks and would not hear or accept correction. ²⁴ But if you listen carefully to me, declares our Father, and bring no load through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy by doing no work on it, ²⁵ then kings and princes who sit on David's throne will come through the gates of this city, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever. ²⁶ People will come from the towns of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and the lowlands, from the hill country and the Negev, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and incense, and thank offerings to the house of our Father. ²⁷ But if you do not listen to me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load while entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in its gates that will consume the palaces of Jerusalem.