Our Father Calls His House to Account
7 1 The word that came to Jeremiah from our Father: 2 Stand at the gate of our Father's house and proclaim this word: Hear the word of our Father, all you people of Judah who enter these gates to worship him.
3 This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Change your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'The temple of our Father! The temple of our Father! The temple of our Father!' 5 For if you truly change your ways and your deeds, if you truly do justice with one another, 6 if you do not oppress the foreigner, orphans, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave long ago to your ancestors, forever and ever. 8 But look — you are trusting in deceptive words that are worth nothing. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house that bears my name, and say, 'We are safe!'—only to keep doing all these detestable things? 11 Has this house that bears my name become a den of robbers in your eyes? I myself have seen it, declares our Father.
12 Now go to my place that was in Shiloh, where I first made my name dwell, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, declares our Father, and because I spoke to you again and again but you did not listen, and I called you but you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house that bears my name, in which you trust, and to the place I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your relatives, all the children of Ephraim. a a v15 Ephraim is shorthand for the northern kingdom of Israel, which Assyria carried into exile around 722 BC.
16 As for you, do not pray for this people; do not raise a cry or prayer for them, and do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods to anger me. b b v18 The queen of heaven was a pagan goddess of fertility worshiped in the ancient Near East — the families were offering household devotion to her instead of to our Father.
19 But am I the one they are provoking? declares our Father. Is it not themselves, to their own shame?
20 Therefore this is what the Sovereign Father says: Look, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place—on people and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground—and it will burn and not be quenched.
21 This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! 22 For on the day I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not merely speak to them or command them about burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this is what I commanded them: Obey my voice, and I will be your Father, and you will be my children. Walk fully in the way I command you, so that it may go well with you. 24 But they did not listen or pay attention; they followed their own plans, in the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and they went backward and not forward. 25 From the day your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I sent all my servants the prophets to you, again and again, day after day. 26 Yet they did not listen to me or pay attention, but were stubborn. They did worse than their ancestors.
27 So you will speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you; you will call to them, but they will not answer.
28 Then say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of our Father and would not accept correction; truth has perished and is gone from their lips. 29 Cut off your hair and throw it away; wail on the bare heights, for our Father has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.
The Valley of Slaughter
30 For the people of Judah have done what is evil in my sight, declares our Father. They have set their detestable idols in the house that bears my name, defiling it. 31 They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—something I never commanded, something that never crossed my mind. c c v31 Topheth was a site in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom south of Jerusalem where children were sacrificed; the valley later gave rise to the word 'Gehenna.' 32 So look, the days are coming, declares our Father, when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth until there is no room left. 33 The dead bodies of this people will become food for the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth, and no one will frighten them away. 34 And I will silence the sound of joy and the sound of gladness in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem—the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride—for the land will become a wasteland.