Jeremiah 7 - 8 - Legacy Standard Bible

Jeremiah 7 - 8

Yahweh’s Warning from the Temple Gate

The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, 2 “Stand in the gate of the house of Yahweh, and you shall call out there this word, and you shall say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, all you of Judah, who enter by these gates to worship Yahweh!’” 3 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Make your ways and your deeds good, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in lying words, saying, ‘This is the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.’ 5 For if you truly make your ways and your deeds good, if you truly do justice between a man and his neighbor, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own evil demise, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. 8 “Behold, you are trusting in lying words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear while lying, and burn incense to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, 10 then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—that you may do all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by My name, become a robbers’ den in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares Yahweh. 12 “But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I made My name dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of My people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these works,” declares Yahweh, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you but you did not answer, 14 therefore, I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave you and your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. 15 I will cast you out of My presence, as I have cast out all your brothers, all the seed of Ephraim. 16 “As for you, do not pray for this people and do not lift up a cry of lamentation or prayer for them and do not intercede with Me, for I am not hearing you. 17 Are you not seeing what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, and the fathers make the fire burn, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to provoke Me. 19 Do they provoke Me?” declares Yahweh. “Is it not themselves they provoke to the shame of their own face?” 20 Therefore thus says Lord Yahweh, “Behold, My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and on beast and on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground; and it will burn and not be quenched.” 21 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh. 22 For I did not speak to your fathers or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Listen to My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in the entire way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart and went backward and not forward. 25 Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My slaves the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them. 26 Yet they did not listen to Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck; they did more evil than their fathers. 27 “You shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you; and you shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 You shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not listen to the voice of Yahweh their God or receive discipline; truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth. 29

Cut off your hair and cast it away,

And lift up a funeral lamentation on the bare heights;

For Yahweh has rejected and abandoned

The generation of His wrath.’

30 For the sons of Judah have done that which is evil in My sight,” declares Yahweh, “they have set their detestable things in the house, which is called by My name, to defile it. 31 They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come upon My heart. 32 “Therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when it will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of the Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place. 33 The dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth; and no one will frighten them away. 34 Then I will make to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land will become a waste place.

The Faithlessness of Jerusalem

“At that time,” declares Yahweh, “they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. 2 And they will spread them out to the sun, the moon, and to all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served, and which they have walked after and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped. They will not be gathered or buried; they will be as dung on the face of the ground. 3 And death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family, that remains in all the places to which I have banished them,” declares Yahweh of hosts. 4 “You shall say to them, ‘Thus says Yahweh,

“Do men fall and not get up again?

Does one turn away and not turn back?

Why then has this people, Jerusalem,

Turned away in continual faithlessness?

They hold fast to deceit;

They refuse to return.

I have given heed and heard,

They have spoken what is not right;

No man regretted his evil,

Saying, ‘What have I done?’

Everyone turned to his course,

Like a horse charging into the battle.

Even the stork in the sky

Knows her seasons;

And the turtledove and the swift and the crane

Keep the time of their migration;

But My people do not know

The legal judgment of Yahweh.

“How can you say, ‘We are wise,

And the law of Yahweh is with us’?

But behold, the lying pen of the scribes

Has made it into a lie.

The wise men are put to shame;

They are dismayed and captured;

Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh,

And what kind of wisdom do they have?

Therefore I will give their wives to others,

Their fields to new possessors,

Because from the least even to the greatest

Everyone is greedy for gain;

From the prophet even to the priest

Everyone practices lying.

They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially,

Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’

But there is no peace.

Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done?

They certainly were not ashamed,

And they did not know how to feel dishonor;

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

At the time of their punishment they shall be brought down,”

Says Yahweh.

“I will surely gather them up,” declares Yahweh;

“There will be no grapes on the vine

And no figs on the fig tree,

And the leaf will wither;

And what I have given them will pass away.”’”

Why are we sitting still?

Gather yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities

And let us be silent there

Because Yahweh our God has silenced us

And given us poisoned water to drink,

For we have sinned against Yahweh.

We waited for peace, but there was no good;

For a time of healing, but behold, terror!

From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses;

At the sound of the neighing of his valiant steeds

The whole land quakes;

And they come and devour the land as well as its fullness,

The city and its inhabitants.

“For behold, I am sending serpents against you,

Vipers, for which there is no charm,

And they will bite you,” declares Yahweh.

Sorrow over Zion

My sorrow is beyond healing;

My heart is faint within me!

Behold, the sound! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land:

“Is Yahweh not in Zion? Is her King not within her?”

“Why have they provoked Me to anger with their graven images, with foreign idols?”

“Harvest is past, summer is ended,

And we are not saved.”

For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken;

I mourn, desolation has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead?

Is there no physician there?

Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people gone up?

Romans 3

There Is None Righteous

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What then? If some did not believe, does their unbelief abolish the faithfulness of God? 4 May it never be! Rather, let God be true and every man a liar, as it is written,

“That You may be justified in Your words,

And overcome when You are judged.”

5 But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is the God who inflicts wrath unrighteous? (I am speaking in human terms.) 6 May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just. 9 What then? Are we better? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; 10 as it is written,

“There is none righteous, not even one;

There is none who understands,

There is none who seeks for God;

All have turned aside, together they have become worthless;

There is none who does good,

There is not even one.”

“Their throat is an open tomb,

With their tongues they keep deceiving,”

“The poison of asps is under their lips”;

“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”;

“Their feet are swift to shed blood,

Destruction and misery are in their paths,

And the path of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are in the Law, so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God; 20 because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

The Righteousness of God through Faith

21 But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith, for a demonstration of His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since indeed God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that faith, is one. 31 Do we then abolish the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

Psalm 99

Holy Is Yahweh Our God

Yahweh reigns, let the peoples tremble;

He sits enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth quake!

Yahweh is great in Zion,

And He is exalted above all the peoples.

Let them praise Your great and awesome name;

Holy is He.

The strength of the King loves justice;

You have established equity;

You have done justice and righteousness in Jacob.

Exalt Yahweh our God

And worship at the footstool of His feet;

Holy is He.

Moses and Aaron were among His priests,

And Samuel was among those who called on His name;

They would call upon Yahweh and He would answer them.

He would speak to them in the pillar of cloud;

They kept His testimonies

And the statute that He gave them.

O Yahweh our God, You answered them;

You were a forgiving God to them,

And yet an avenger of their evil deeds.

Exalt Yahweh our God

And worship at His holy mountain,

For holy is Yahweh our God.