Jeremiah 15 - 16, Romans 7, Psalm 104

Yahweh Appoints Four Kinds of Doom

15Then Yahweh said to me, “Even ^athough ^bMoses and ^cSamuel were to ^dstand before Me, My soul would not be ¹with this people; ^esend them away from My presence and let them go! ²“And it will be that when they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you are to tell them, ‘Thus says Yahweh: “Those destined ^afor death, to death;And those destined for the sword, to the sword;And those destined for famine, to famine;And those destined for captivity, to captivity.”’

³“I will ^aappoint over them four kinds of doom,” declares Yahweh: “the sword to kill, the ^bdogs to drag off, and the ^cbirds of the sky and the beasts of the earth to devour and bring to ruin. ⁴“I will ^agive them over to be an example of terror among all the kingdoms of the earth because of ^bManasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.

⁵“Indeed, who will ^aspare you, O Jerusalem,Or who will ^bconsole you,Or who will turn aside to ask about your well-being?⁶“You who have ^aabandoned Me,” declares Yahweh,“You keep ^bgoing backward.So I will ^cstretch out My hand against you and bring you to ruin;I am ^dtired of ¹relenting!⁷“And I will ^awinnow them with a winnowing forkAt the gates of the land;I will ^bbereave them of children; I will make My people perish;^cThey did not ¹repent of their ways.⁸“Their ^awidows will be more numerous before MeThan the sand of the seas;I will bring against them, against the mother of a choice man,A ^bdestroyer at noonday;I will suddenly bring down on herAnguish and terror.⁹“She who ^abore seven sons languishes;¹Her breathing is labored.Her ^bsun has set while it was yet day;She has been ^cshamed and humiliated.So I will ^dgive over their survivors to the swordBefore their enemies,” declares Yahweh.

Jeremiah Pleads for Vengeance

¹⁰^aWoe to me, my mother, that you have borne meAs a ^bman of strife and a man of contention to all the land!I have not ^clent, nor have men lent money to me,Yet everyone curses me.¹¹Yahweh said, “Surely I will ^aset you free for purposes of good;Surely I will cause the ^benemy to intercede with youIn a time of disaster and a time of distress.¹²“Can anyone smash iron,^aIron from the north, or bronze?¹³“Your ^awealth and your treasuresI will give for plunder ^bwithout cost,Even for all your sinsAnd within all your borders.¹⁴“Then I will cause your enemies to pass ¹it overInto a ^aland you do not know,For a ^bfire has been kindled in My anger;It will burn upon you.”¹⁵^aYou who know, O Yahweh,Remember me, take notice of me,And ^btake vengeance for me on my persecutors.Do not, in view of Your patience, take me away;Know that ^cfor Your sake I endure reproach.¹⁶Your words were found, and I ^aate them,And Your ^bwords became for me joy and gladness in my heart,For I have been ^ccalled by Your name,O Yahweh God of hosts.¹⁷I ^adid not sit in the circle of merrymakers,Nor did I exult.Because of Your hand upon me I sat ^balone,For You ^cfilled me with indignation.¹⁸Why has my pain been perpetualAnd my ^awound incurable, refusing to be healed?Will You indeed be to me ^blike a deceptive streamWith water that is unreliable?

Yahweh’s Answer

¹⁹Therefore thus says Yahweh, “^aIf you return, then I will cause you to return—^bBefore Me you will stand;And ^cif you extract the precious from the worthless,You will become ¹My mouthpiece.They for their part may turn to you,But as for you, you must not turn to them.

²⁰“Then I will ^amake you to this peopleA fortified wall of bronze;And they will fight against you,But they will not prevail against you,For ^bI am with you to save youAnd deliver you,” declares Yahweh.²¹“So I will ^adeliver you from the hand of the evil ones,And I will ^bredeem you from the ¹grasp of the ruthless ones.”

Yahweh Withdraws His Favor

16The word of Yahweh also came to me saying, ²“You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place.” ³For thus says Yahweh concerning the sons and daughters born in this place and concerning their ^amothers who bear them and their ^bfathers who beget them in this land: ⁴“They will ^adie of deadly diseases; they ^bwill not be lamented or buried; they will be as ^cdung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the ^dbirds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth.”

⁵For thus says Yahweh, “Do not enter the house of the ^afuneral meal, or go to lament or to console them; for I have ^bwithdrawn My peace from this people,” declares Yahweh, “My ^clovingkindness and compassion. ⁶“Both ^agreat men and small will die in this land; they will not be buried; they will not be lamented, nor will anyone ^bgash himself or ^cshave his head for them. ⁷“Men will not ^abreak bread in mourning for them, to comfort anyone for the dead, nor give them a cup of comforting to drink for anyone’s father or mother. ⁸“Moreover you shall ^anot go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink.” ⁹For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I am going to ^acause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of rejoicing and the voice of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰“Now when you tell this people all these words, they will say to you, ‘^aFor what reason has Yahweh declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against Yahweh our God?’ ¹¹“Then you are to say to them, ‘It is ^abecause your fathers have forsaken Me,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and have walked after ^bother gods and served them and worshiped them; but Me they have forsaken and have not kept My law. ¹²‘You too have done evil, even ^amore than your fathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the ^bstubbornness of his own ^cevil heart, without listening to Me. ¹³‘So I will ^ahurl you out of this land into the ^bland which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers; and there you will ^cserve other gods day and night, for I will grant you no favor.’

They Shall Know My Name Is Yahweh

¹⁴“^aTherefore behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As Yahweh lives, who ^bbrought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ ¹⁵but, ‘As Yahweh lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the ^aland of the north and from all the lands where He had banished them.’ For I will return them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.

¹⁶“Behold, I am going to send for many ^afishermen,” declares Yahweh, “and they will fish for them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they will ^bhunt them ^cfrom every mountain and every hill and from the crevices of the rocks. ¹⁷“^aFor My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, ^bnor is their iniquity concealed from My eyes. ¹⁸“I will first ^adoubly repay their iniquity and their sin because they have ^bprofaned My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their ^cdetestable idols and with their abominations.”

¹⁹O Yahweh, my ^astrength and my strong defense,And my ^brefuge in the day of distress,To You the ^cnations will comeFrom the ends of the earth and say,“Our fathers have inherited nothing but ^dlies,Futility and ¹^,^ethings of no profit.”²⁰Can man make gods for himself?Yet they are ^anot gods!²¹“Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—This time I will ^amake them knowMy ¹power and My might;And they shall ^bknow that My name is Yahweh.”

Released from the Law

7Or do you not know, ^abrothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is master over a person as long as he lives? ²For ^athe married woman has been bound by law to her ¹husband while he is living, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law ²concerning the husband. ³So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

⁴So, my brothers, you also were ^amade to die ^bto the Law ^cthrough the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵For while we were ^ain the flesh, the sinful passions, which were ^baroused by the Law, were at work ^cin our members to bear fruit for death. ⁶But now we have been ^areleased from the Law, having ^bdied to that by which we were constrained, so that we serve in ^cnewness of ¹^,^dthe Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

⁷^aWhat shall we say then? Is the Law sin? ^bMay it never be! Rather, ^cI would not have come to know sin except ¹through the Law. For I would not have known about ²coveting if the Law had not said, “^dYou shall not ³covet.” ⁸But sin, ^ataking opportunity ^bthrough the commandment, worked out in me ¹coveting of every kind. For ^capart ²from the Law sin is dead. ⁹Now I was once alive apart ¹from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; ¹⁰and this commandment, which was ¹^,^ato lead to life, was found ²to lead to death for me. ¹¹For sin, ^ataking an opportunity ^bthrough the commandment, ^cdeceived me and through it killed me. ¹²^aSo, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

The Conflict of Two Natures

¹³Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? ^aMay it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by working out my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would ¹become utterly sinful.

¹⁴For we know that the Law is ^aspiritual, but I am ^bfleshly, ^chaving been sold ¹^,^dinto bondage under sin. ¹⁵For what I am working out, ^aI do not understand; for I am not practicing ^bwhat I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. ¹⁶But if I do the very thing I do not want, I agree with ^athe Law, that it is good. ¹⁷So now, ^ano longer am I the one working it out, but sin which dwells in me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my ^aflesh; for the willing is present in me, but the working out of the good is not. ¹⁹For ^athe good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. ²⁰But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, ^aI am no longer the one working it out, but sin which dwells in me.

²¹I find then ^athe ¹principle that in me evil is present—in me who wants to do good. ²²For I joyfully concur with the law of God ¹in ^athe inner man, ²³but I see ^aa different law in my members, waging war against the ^blaw of my mind and making me a captive ¹to ^cthe law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from ¹^,^athe body of this ^bdeath? ²⁵¹^,^aThanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh ^bthe law of sin.

The Glory of Yahweh Endures Forever

104^aBless Yahweh, O my soul!O Yahweh my God, You are very great;You are ^bclothed with splendor and majesty,²Wrapping Yourself with ^alight as with a cloak,^bStretching out the heavens like a tent curtain.³¹He ^alays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters;²He sets up the ^bclouds to be His chariot;³He walks upon the ^cwings of the wind;⁴¹He makes His ²angels ^athe winds,His ministers flaming ^bfire.⁵He ^afounded the earth upon its place,So that it will not ¹shake forever and ever.⁶You ^acovered it with the deep as with a garment;The waters were standing above the mountains.⁷At Your ^arebuke they fled,At the ^bsound of Your thunder they hurried away in alarm.⁸The mountains went up; the valleys went downTo the ^aplace which You founded for them.⁹You set a ^aboundary that they may not pass over,So that they will not return to cover the earth.¹⁰¹He sends forth ^asprings in the valleys;They flow between the mountains;¹¹They ^agive water to every beast of the field;The ^bwild donkeys quench their thirst.¹²Above them the birds of the heavens ^adwell;They give forth their voices among the branches.¹³¹He ^agives water to the mountains from His upper chambers;^bThe earth is satisfied with the fruit of His works.¹⁴¹He causes the ^agrass to grow for the ²cattle,And ^bvegetation for man’s ³cultivation,To bring forth ⁴food ^cfrom the earth,¹⁵And ^awine which makes man’s heart glad,^bTo make his face glisten more than oil,And ¹food which ^csustains man’s heart.¹⁶The trees of Yahweh are satisfied,The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,¹⁷Where the ^abirds build their nests,The ^bstork’s home is in the ¹fir trees.¹⁸The high mountains are for the ^awild goats;The ^bcliffs are a refuge for the ¹^,^cshephanim.¹⁹He made the moon ^afor the seasons;The ^bsun knows the place of its setting.²⁰You ^aappoint darkness so that it becomes night,In which all the ^bbeasts of the forest ^ccreep about.²¹The ^ayoung lions roar to go after their preyAnd to ^bseek their food from God.²²When the sun rises they gather togetherAnd lie down in their ^adens.²³Man goes forth to ^ahis workAnd to his labor until evening.²⁴How ^anumerous are Your works, O Yahweh!¹In ^bwisdom You have made them all;The ^cearth is full of Your ²possessions.²⁵This is the ^asea, great and ¹broad,There the creeping things are without number,Creatures both small and great.²⁶There the ^aships move along,And ¹^,^bLeviathan, which You have formed to play in it.²⁷They all ^await for YouTo ^bgive them their food in ¹due season.²⁸You give to them, they gather it up;You ^aopen Your hand, they are satisfied with good.²⁹You ^ahide Your face, they are dismayed;You ^btake away their ¹spirit, they breathe their lastAnd ^creturn to their dust.³⁰You send forth Your ¹^,^aSpirit, they are created;And You renew the face of the ground.³¹Let the ^aglory of Yahweh endure forever;Let Yahweh ^bbe glad in His works;³²¹He ^alooks at the earth, and it ^btrembles;He ^ctouches the mountains, and they smoke.³³¹I will sing to Yahweh ^athroughout my life;²I will ^bsing praise to my God ³while I have my being.³⁴Let my ^amusing be pleasing to Him;As for me, I shall ^bbe glad in Yahweh.³⁵Let sinners be ^aconsumed from the earthAnd let the ^bwicked be no more.^cBless Yahweh, O my soul.¹^,^dPraise Yah!