Jeremy 9

¹Who will give water to my head, and to mine eyes a fountain of tears? And I will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.

²Who will give me in the wilderness an inn of wayfaring men, and I will forsake my people, and depart from them? Because they are all adulterers, an assembly of transgressors.

³And they have bent their tongue, as a bow of lying and not of truth: they have taken courage in the land, because they have proceeded from evil to evil, and me they have not known, saith our Lord.

⁴Let every man take heed to himself of his neighbour, and in every brother of his, let him not have affiance: because every brother supplanting will supplant, and every friend will walk deceitfully.

⁵And man shall scorn his brother, and they will not speak truth: for they have taught their tongue to speak lies: they have laboured to do unjustly.

⁶Thine inhabitation is in the midst of deceit: in deceit they have refused to know me, saith our Lord.

⁷Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Behold I will melt, and will try them: for what else shall I do at the face of the daughter of my people?

⁸There tongue is a wandering arrow, it hath spoken guile: in his mouth he hath spoken peace with his friend, and secretly he layeth wait for him.

⁹Shall I not visit upon these things, saith our Lord? Or upon such a nation shall not my soul be revenged?

¹⁰Upon the mountains I will take up weeping and lamentation, & upon the beautiful places of the desert, mourning: because they are burnt, for that there is not a man that passeth through: and they have not heard the voice of the owner: from the fowl of the air unto the beasts they are gone away & departed.

¹¹And I will make Jerusalem to be heaps of sand, and dens of dragons: and I will give the cities of Juda into desolation, because there is not an inhabiter.

¹²Who is a wise man, that can understand this, & to whom the word of the mouth of our Lord may be made, that he may declare this, why the earth hath perished, and is burnt as a desert, because there is none that passeth through?

¹³And our Lord said: Because they have forsaken my law, which I gave them, and have not heard my voice, & have not walked in it.

¹⁴And they have gone after the perversity of their own heart, and after Baalim, which they learned of their fathers.

¹⁵Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Behold I will feed this people with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.

¹⁶And I will disperse them in the Nations, which they & their fathers have not known: & I will send the sword after them, till they be consumed.

¹⁷Thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Consider & call ye lamenting women, & let them come: & send to them that are wise, and let them make haste:

¹⁸let them hasten & take up a lamentation upon us: let our eyes shed tears, & our eye-lids run down with waters.

¹⁹Because a voice of lamentation is heard from Sion: How are we wasted and confounded exceedingly? Because we have left the land, because our tabernacles are cast down.

²⁰Hear therefore ye women the word of our Lord: and let your ears take the word of his mouth: and teach your daughters lamentation: & every one her neighbour mourning:

²¹because death is come up through our windows, it is entered into our houses, to destroy the children from without, the young men out of the streets.

²²Speak: Thus saith our Lord: and the carcass of man shall fall as dung upon the face of the country, and as a grass behind the back of the mower, and there is none to gather it.

²³Thus saith our Lord: Let not the wiseman glory in his wisdom, & let not the strong man glory in his strength, & let not the rich man glory in his riches:

²⁴but he that glorieth, let him glory in this, to understand & know me, because I am the Lord that do mercy and judgement, & justice in the earth: for these things please me, saith our Lord.

²⁵Behold, the days come, saith our Lord; & I will visit upon every one that hath the prepuce circumcised.

²⁶upon Ægypt, and upon Juda, & upon Edom, and upon the children of Ammon, & upon Moab, & upon all that have their hair polled, dwelling in the desert: because all nations have the prepuce, but all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.