Jerusalem

Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?

“Tell the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, ‘Watchers come from a far country, and raise their voice against the cities of Judah.

“Run back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places of it, if you can find a man, if there are any who does justly, who seeks truth; and I will pardon her.

“Flee for safety, you children of Benjamin, out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the shofar in Tekoa, and raise up a signal on Beth Haccherem; for evil looks out from the north, and a great destruction.

For the LORD of Hosts said, “Cut down trees, and cast up a mound against Jerusalem: this is the city to be visited; she is wholly oppression in the midst of her.

Be instructed, Jerusalem, lest my soul be alienated from you; lest I make you a desolation, a land not inhabited.”

Don’t you see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?

Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall become a waste.”

“At that time,” says the LORD, “they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves;

I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling place of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.

Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;

The LORD said to me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear the words of this covenant, and do them.

The LORD said to me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Then shall the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem go and cry to the gods to which they offer incense: but they will not save them at all in the time of their trouble.

For according to the number of your cities are your gods, Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have you set up altars to the shameful thing, even altars to burn incense to Baal.

Thus says the LORD, In this way I will mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.

Then you shall tell them, Thus says the LORD, Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings who sit on David’s throne, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness.

I have seen your abominations, even your adulteries, and your neighing, the lewdness of your prostitution, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, Jerusalem! You will not be made clean; how long shall it yet be?

Judah mourns, and its gates languish, they sit in black on the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.

The people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have no one to bury them—them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness on them.

I will cause them to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem.

For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? or who will bemoan you? or who will turn aside to ask of your welfare?

Thus said the LORD to me: Go, and stand in the gate of the children of the people, through which the kings of Judah come in, and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem;

and tell them, Hear the LORD’s word, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates:

Thus says the LORD, Be careful, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;