are always on their lips but far from their hearts.
3 Yet you know me, O Lord ; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered! Set them apart for the day of slaughter!
4 How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished. Moreover, the people are saying, 'He will not see what happens to us.'
5 'If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?
6 Your brothers, your own family- even they have betrayed you; they have raised a loud cry against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you.
7 'I will forsake my house, abandon my inheritance; I will give the one I love into the hands of her enemies.
8 My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest. She roars at me; therefore I hate her.
9 Has not my inheritance become to me like a speckled bird of prey that other birds of prey surround and attack? Go and gather all the wild beasts; bring them to devour.
10 Many shepherds will ruin my vineyard and trample down my field; they will turn my pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.
11 It will be made a wasteland, parched and desolate before me; the whole land will be laid waste because there is no one who cares.
12 Over all the barren heights in the desert destroyers will swarm, for the sword of the Lord will devour from one end of the land to the other; no one will be safe.
13 They will sow wheat but reap thorns; they will wear themselves out but gain nothing. So bear the shame of your harvest because of the Lord 's fierce anger.'
14 This is what the Lord says: 'As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them.
15 But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to his own inheritance and his own country.
16 And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, 'As surely as the Lord lives'-even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal-then they will be established among my people.
17 But if any nation does not listen, I will completely uproot and destroy it,' declares the Lord .
13 This is what the Lord said to me: 'Go and buy a linen belt and put it around your waist, but do not let it touch water.'
2 So I bought a belt, as the Lord directed, and put it around my waist.
3 Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time:
4 'Take the belt you bought and are wearing around your waist, and go now to Perath and hide it there in a crevice in the rocks.'
5 So I went and hid it at Perath, as the Lord told me.
6 Many days later the Lord said to me, 'Go now to Perath and get the belt I told you to hide there.'
7 So I went to Perath and dug up the belt and took it from the place where I had hidden it, but now it was ruined and completely useless.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me:
9 'This is what the Lord says: 'In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.
10 These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt-completely useless!
11 For as a belt is bound around a man's waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,' declares the Lord , 'to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.'
12 'Say to them: 'This is what the Lord , the God of Israel, says: Every wineskin should be filled with wine.' And if they say to you, 'Don't we know that every wineskin should be filled with wine?'
13 then tell them, 'This is what the Lord says: I am going to fill with drunkenness all who live in this land, including the kings who sit on David's throne, the priests, the prophets and all those living in Jerusalem.
14 I will smash them one against the other, fathers and sons alike, declares the Lord . I will allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them.' '
15 Hear and pay attention, do not be arrogant, for the Lord has spoken.
16 Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom.
17 But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will
