Jerusalem

Wash the evil from your heart, Yerushalayim, so that you can be saved. How long will you harbor within yourselves your evil thoughts?

"Report it to the nations, proclaim about Yerushalayim: '[Enemies] are coming from a distant country, watching and shouting their war cry against the cities of Y'hudah.'

"Roam the streets of Yerushalayim look around, observe and ask in its open spaces: if you can find anyone (if there is anyone!) who acts with justice and seeks the truth, I will pardon her.

"Head for cover, people of Binyamin, get out of Yerushalayim! Blow the shofar in T'koa, light the beacon on Beit-Hakerem. For disaster threatens from the north, with great destruction.

For ADONAI-Tzva'ot says this: "Cut down her trees, and raise a siege-ramp against Yerushalayim! This is the city to be punished; in her there is nothing but oppression.

Accept correction, Yerushalayim, or I will be estranged from you and turn you into a desolate waste, a land without inhabitants."

Don't you see what they are doing in the cities of Y'hudah and in the streets of Yerushalayim?

Then in the cities of Y'hudah and the streets of Yerushalayim I will silence the sounds of joy and gladness and the voices of bridegroom and bride; because the land will be reduced to ruins.

"At that time," says ADONAI, "[these enemies] will remove the bones of the kings of Y'hudah, the bones of his princes, the bones of the cohanim, the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Yerushalayim from their graves.

"I will make Yerushalayim a heap of ruins, turn it into a lair for jackals, and make the cities of Y'hudah desolate, with no one living there."

"Listen to the words of this covenant; then speak to the people of Y'hudah and the inhabitants of Yerushalayim;

ADONAI said to me, "Proclaim all these words in the cities of Y'hudah and in the streets of Yerushalayim: 'Listen to the words of this covenant, and obey them.

Then ADONAI said to me, "The men of Y'hudah and the people living in Yerushalayim have formed a conspiracy.

Then the cities of Y'hudah and the people living in Yerushalayim will go and cry to the gods to whom they are making offerings; but they will not save them at all in their time of trouble.

For you have as many gods, Y'hudah, as you have towns; and you have erected as many altars for sacrificing to that shameful thing, Ba'al, as there are streets in Yerushalayim.

"Here is what ADONAI says: 'This is how I will ruin what makes Y'hudah so proud and Yerushalayim so very proud:

you are to answer them, "This is what ADONAI says: 'I am going to fill all the inhabitants of this land - including the kings sitting on the throne of David, the cohanim, the prophets and the inhabitants of Yerushalayim - with drunkenness.

On the hills and in the fields, I have seen your abominations - your adulteries, your lustful neighings your shameless prostitution. Woe to you, Yerushalayim! You refuse to be purified! Won't you ever allow it?"

"Y'hudah is mourning, her gates are languishing; they sit on the ground in gloom; Yerushalayim sends up a cry of anguish.

And the people to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Yerushalayim because of the famine and war, with no one to bury them - them, or their wives, or their sons, or their daughters - because I will pour their own wickedness out upon them.

I will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of M'nasheh the son of Hizkiyahu king of Y'hudah, because of what he did in Yerushalayim.

"Who will take pity on you, Yerushalayim? Who will grieve for you? Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?

Then ADONAI said this to me: "Go, and stand at the People's Gate, where the kings of Y'hudah go in and out, and at all the gates of Yerushalayim;

and say to them: 'Kings of Y'hudah, all Y'hudah and all living in Yerushalayim who enter through these gates, hear the word of ADONAI!

Here is what ADONAI says: "If you value your lives, don't carry anything on Shabbat or bring it in through the gates of Yerushalayim;