Old Testament · 52 chapters

Jeremiah

• No. 2 Jeremiah 52:17-23

  Jeremiah spent his life warning Jerusalem that Babylon would take the city, and the book that carries his name ends by recording that it happened. The last chapter is mostly a chronicle, close to the account...

• No. 8 Jeremiah 34:17-22

  The book of Jeremiah is set in the last years of Jerusalem, as the army of Babylon closes in during the early 500s BC. King Zedekiah holds a shrinking throne, the city is under siege, and the prophet keeps...

• No. 17 Jeremiah 11:14-23

  Jeremiah prophesied in Jerusalem's last decades, warning that the nation's idolatry would bring Babylon down on it. The book keeps not only his public oracles but his private anguish, a set of passages often...

• No. 38 Jeremiah 3:1-5

  Jeremiah is arguing with Judah about its worship of other gods, and he reaches for the hardest image he has: a marriage that has broken down. The law said that if a man divorced his wife and she married...

• No. 40 Jeremiah 41:9-18

  Jerusalem has fallen to Babylon. The temple is burned, most of the population is deported, and the Babylonians appoint a Judean named Gedaliah to govern the poor who remain, from the town of Mizpah. It is the...

• No. 59 Jeremiah 30:1-11

  Most of Jeremiah is warning. Chapters 30 to 33 are the exception, a short section often called the Book of Consolation, and this passage opens it. The first instruction is to write. Take all the words I have...

• No. 72 Jeremiah 44:20-25

  Jerusalem has fallen, and a group of Judeans has fled to Egypt against Jeremiah's advice, taking him with them. This passage is his last recorded confrontation, and the argument he is answering is unusual...

• No. 73 Jeremiah 33:10-16

  Jeremiah is under arrest in the palace guardhouse, the Babylonian army is outside the walls, and the city is going to fall. This passage belongs to the promise section written from inside that siege, and it...

• No. 93 Jeremiah 49:1-6

  Jeremiah's book includes a series of oracles against the nations surrounding Judah, and this passage addresses Ammon, a small kingdom east of the Jordan around modern Amman, which still carries the name. The...

• No. 115 Jeremiah 37:1-5

  Zedekiah is the last king of Judah, installed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar after Babylon deported his predecessor. This passage sets up the final siege, and it says two things about him that do not fit...

• No. 120 Jeremiah 40:1-5

  Jerusalem has fallen. Jeremiah, who spent forty years telling the city Babylon would take it, has been rounded up with everyone else, chained, and marched to the staging camp at Ramah with the deportees. This...

• No. 162 Jeremiah 1:11-19

  Jeremiah has just been called as a prophet and has objected that he is only a boy. This passage is God training him with two questions, and the first turns on a pun that only works in Hebrew.

• No. 165 Jeremiah 9:22-26

  Jeremiah has been describing a catastrophe, and this passage opens on its worst image: bodies falling like dung on the open field, like the cut grain behind the reaper with no one to gather it. Then, without...

• No. 182 Jeremiah 7:20-26

  Jeremiah is standing in the gate of the temple, telling people arriving to worship that the building will not save them. This passage is the most startling thing he says there.

• No. 203 Jeremiah 47:1-7

  This short oracle concerns the Philistines, Israel's neighbors on the coastal plain and their enemies for centuries. It is dated before Pharaoh struck Gaza, so it is set against a specific campaign, though the...

• No. 245 Jeremiah 13:1-5

  This is one of Jeremiah's sign-acts, where the prophet is told to do something strange and physical and the action itself becomes the message. It begins with a linen belt and no explanation at all. God says:...

• No. 350 Jeremiah 2:33-37

  Jeremiah is delivering a hard indictment of Judah, and the charges are specific and ugly. She has become an expert at chasing lovers, he says, meaning her frantic pursuit of foreign alliances and foreign gods,...

• No. 400 Jeremiah 22:1-5

  God sends Jeremiah on an errand straight into the corridors of power. Go down to the palace, he tells the prophet, to the house of the king of Judah, and deliver this word. And the word is not about religious...

• No. 448 Jeremiah 25:7-11

  This is a word of judgment on Judah for refusing to listen to God, and it contains one of the most unsettling phrases in the whole book. God announces that he will bring the armies of the north against the...

• No. 455 Jeremiah 5:1-6

  God gives Jeremiah a striking assignment: run up and down the streets of Jerusalem, search its squares, and see if you can find even one person who does justice and seeks truth. If you can find a single...

• No. 469 Jeremiah 5:18-22

  In the middle of a hard passage of judgment, God pauses to ask his people a question, and to display something about himself that should have stopped them in their tracks. Hear this, he says, foolish people...

• No. 485 Jeremiah 52:6-11

  This is the end that Jeremiah had spent his whole career warning was coming. After a long siege, the famine in Jerusalem grows so severe there is no bread left, the walls are breached, and King Zedekiah flees...

• No. 487 Jeremiah 37:11-15

  The Babylonian army has temporarily pulled back from Jerusalem, and in the lull Jeremiah tries to leave the city on a purely private errand, to go to his home territory in Benjamin and see to a piece of family...

• No. 508 Jeremiah 31:1-6

  This comes in the middle of Jeremiah, a book heavy with judgment and coming disaster, and suddenly the tone breaks open into pure tenderness. God speaks to a people who are about to lose everything, and he...

• No. 509 Jeremiah 25:32-38

  This is a sweeping oracle of judgment, disaster rolling out from nation to nation like a great storm rising from the ends of the earth, the slain lying unburied across the ground. It is grim and universal. But...

• No. 512 Jeremiah 31:15-22

  This passage begins in inconsolable grief. A voice is heard in Ramah, God says, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. It is the...

• No. 516 Jeremiah 11:6-13

  God tells Jeremiah to proclaim the terms of the covenant through the towns of Judah, reminding the people how relentlessly he had pleaded with their ancestors from the day he brought them out of Egypt, rising...

• No. 519 Jeremiah 44:15-19

  This is one of the most defiant scenes in all the prophets. Jeremiah has warned the Judeans who fled to Egypt to stop worshiping the queen of heaven, a pagan goddess, and here they answer him to his face, a...

• No. 522 Jeremiah 38:16-22

  King Zedekiah secretly summons Jeremiah, swears to protect him, and asks, in effect, for the truth. And Jeremiah gives it to him as plainly as it can be given. If you surrender to the officials of the king of...

• No. 573 Jeremiah 23:15-24

  Jeremiah is confronting the false prophets of Jerusalem, the ones who tell everyone exactly what they want to hear, promising peace to people set on evil, saying no harm will come to anyone who walks in the...

• No. 672 Jeremiah 48:33-47

  Jeremiah's book gathers a run of oracles against the surrounding nations, and chapter 48 is the long one against Moab, Israel's neighbor across the Dead Sea. The judgment is total. Gladness is stripped from...

• No. 689 Jeremiah 38:11-15

  Jerusalem is in the last months of the Babylonian siege, and Jeremiah has been prophesying the one thing the city's officials cannot bear to hear: that those who surrender will live and those who stay will...

• No. 701 Jeremiah 23:30-40

  Jeremiah spent his life among prophets who told the people what they wanted to hear, and here God turns on them. I am against the prophets, he says, three times over. Against the ones who steal my words from...

• No. 729 Jeremiah 21:8-14

  The Babylonian army is around Jerusalem, and King Zedekiah has sent to Jeremiah hoping for a word of rescue. What Jeremiah gives him is the opposite. Thus says the LORD, he begins: I set before you the way of...

• No. 736 Jeremiah 4:7-12

  Jeremiah is warning Jerusalem that an invader is coming down from the north, and he paints it as a lion breaking from its thicket, a destroyer of nations already on the road, coming to make the land a waste....

• No. 758 Jeremiah 44:7-14

  After Jerusalem was burned, a group of survivors fled down to Egypt for safety, dragging Jeremiah along with them, against everything God had told them. And once there, in their place of refuge, they went...

• No. 833 Jeremiah 49:12-22

  Jeremiah's oracle against Edom is heavy with judgment, and much of it falls on the pride of a people who thought their mountain fortresses put them out of reach. But near the end God asks a string of...

• No. 839 Jeremiah 52:29-34

  The book of Jeremiah ends the way the exile did, in tallies of the carried-away: eight hundred and thirty-two here, seven hundred and forty-five there, dry numbers of people torn from their land. It is a bleak...

• No. 851 Jeremiah 18:18-23

  Jeremiah's enemies have grown tired of his warnings, and they make a cold decision. Come, they say, let us plot against Jeremiah; we still have the law from the priest and counsel from the wise and the word...

• No. 865 Jeremiah 31:30-40

  Jeremiah is prophesying in the last years of Judah, with Babylon closing in and the old covenant in ruins because the people broke it. Into that failure God announces something new: a covenant he will make...

• No. 934 Jeremiah 26:7-11

  Jeremiah has just delivered a sermon in the temple courts, warning that if Judah will not repent, God will make this house like Shiloh, the sanctuary that was destroyed, and the city a desolation. The reaction...

• No. 1016 Jeremiah 25:27-31

  Jeremiah is given a terrible image: a cup of God's wrath that the nations must drink. Drink, be drunk, vomit, fall, and rise no more, God says, because of the sword coming among you. And if they refuse the...

• No. 1020 Jeremiah 10:1-10

  Jeremiah mocks the idols of the nations to comfort a frightened people. Do not learn the way of the nations, God says, or be terrified by omens in the sky as they are. Their gods are absurd: a man cuts a tree...

• No. 1022 Jeremiah 15:11-21

  Jeremiah is at a low point, and this passage holds both his complaint and God's response. He tells God, your words were found, and I ate them, and they became the joy of my heart, but obedience has cost him...

• No. 1036 Jeremiah 18:11-17

  God tells Jeremiah to warn Judah: I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan; so turn back, each of you from your evil way, and mend your ways. It is an invitation to repent while there is still...

• No. 1058 Jeremiah 36:8-14

  Jeremiah, banned from the temple, has dictated all God's words to his scribe Baruch, who writes them on a scroll. On a fast day, when crowds have gathered in Jerusalem, Baruch stands in a room off the temple...

• No. 1066 Jeremiah 12:1-17

  Jeremiah brings God a hard complaint. You are righteous, LORD, he begins, so let me put my case: why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do the treacherous thrive? You planted them, they take root, they...

• No. 1073 Jeremiah 1:1-5

  The book of Jeremiah opens with a word of dating and place, the words of Jeremiah, a priest's son from Anathoth, in the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah, up to the exile. But then the LORD's word...

• No. 1087 Jeremiah 49:7-11

  Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Edom, the proud descendants of Esau, famed for their wisdom and their fortress cities. God announces their wisdom has vanished, disaster is coming, and unlike grape-gatherers or...

• No. 1096 Jeremiah 23:7-14

  Jeremiah first announces a coming new exodus: a day when people will no longer swear by the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, but by the God who brought them back from the land of the north, out of exile....

• No. 1115 Jeremiah 49:23-33

  Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Damascus, whose people melt with fear at the bad news, and then on the desert tribes of Kedar and Hazor. God summons Babylon against them with a chilling description: go up...

• No. 1141 Jeremiah 33:17-26

  In the middle of the exile, with Jerusalem falling and the throne of David collapsing, God gives Jeremiah a promise of staggering firmness. David will never lack a man to sit on his throne, and the Levitical...

• No. 1178 Jeremiah 9:17-21

  God tells Jeremiah to summon the professional mourning women, the skilled wailers, to come quickly and raise a lament, so that the people's eyes run down with tears. A voice of wailing rises from Zion: how we...

• No. 1222 Jeremiah 22:11-17

  Jeremiah pronounces judgment on the kings of Judah. On one exiled king, Shallum, he says he will never return but die in captivity. Then a woe against a king, likely Jehoiakim, who builds a grand palace by...

• No. 1255 Jeremiah 42:13-22

  The frightened remnant left in Judah after the fall of Jerusalem comes to Jeremiah with an earnest-sounding request: pray to the LORD for us, tell us where to go and what to do, and whatever he says, we will...

• No. 1262 Jeremiah 5:23-31

  Jeremiah exposes the rot in Judah. The people have a stubborn, rebellious heart; they do not even say, let us fear the LORD who gives the rain and the harvest. Among God's own people are wicked men who lie in...

• No. 1290 Jeremiah 44:1-6

  Jeremiah brings God's word to the Jews who have fled to Egypt after Jerusalem's fall. God reminds them of what they have just seen: the desolation of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, empty and ruined,...

• No. 1305 Jeremiah 44:26-30

  Jeremiah delivers God's final word to the stubborn Jews in Egypt who have kept worshiping other gods. God swears by his great name that his name will no longer be invoked by any of them, that he is watching...

• No. 1336 Jeremiah 16:1-7

  God gives Jeremiah a series of hard commands about his own life. You shall not take a wife or have sons or daughters in this place, God tells him, because the children born here will die grievous deaths,...

• No. 1374 Jeremiah 30:12-17

  God speaks a hard word to his wounded people, and then a word of hope. Your hurt is incurable, he tells them, your wound grievous; there is no one to plead your cause, no medicine for your sore; all your...

• No. 1389 Jeremiah 8:17-22

  Jeremiah grieves over the coming ruin of his people, and God grieves with him. Judgment is at hand, and the people cry out from far away, is the LORD not in Zion? Then comes a line heavy with lost opportunity:...

• No. 1429 Jeremiah 27:16-22

  Other prophets are telling the people of Jerusalem a comforting message: the temple vessels that Babylon carried off will soon be brought back; the crisis will be over shortly. Jeremiah calls this a lie. Do...

• No. 1449 Jeremiah 42:7-12

  The remnant left in Judah after the fall of Jerusalem, terrified of the king of Babylon, have asked Jeremiah to seek God's word on whether they should flee to Egypt. After ten days God answers. If you stay in...

• No. 1455 Jeremiah 19:1-6

  God tells Jeremiah to buy a potter's earthen jar and take some of the elders out to the Valley of Hinnom, and there to proclaim judgment. The indictment is grievous: the people have forsaken God, filled this...

• No. 1538 Jeremiah 17:1-16

  Jeremiah draws a sharp contrast between two kinds of trust. Cursed is the one who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns from the LORD; he is like a shrub in the desert, in a parched and...

• No. 1541 Jeremiah 51:33-48

  Jeremiah prophesies the fall of Babylon, the great empire that had crushed Jerusalem. Zion had cried out that Nebuchadnezzar had devoured her, swallowed her up, made her an empty vessel. And God answers: I...

• No. 1554 Jeremiah 21:1-7

  With Babylon besieging Jerusalem, King Zedekiah sends to Jeremiah, hoping for a favorable word: inquire of the LORD for us; perhaps he will do one of his wonders and make Nebuchadnezzar withdraw. But the...

• No. 1591 Jeremiah 3:19-25

  God speaks in the language of a wounded love. I longed to treat you as a cherished child, he says, to give you a pleasant land, and to have you call me Father and never turn away; but you have dealt...

• No. 1610 Jeremiah 48:1-16

  Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Moab, a nation that had long lived undisturbed. Among the images he uses is a telling one drawn from winemaking. Moab has been at ease from his youth, he says, and has settled...

• No. 1617 Jeremiah 43:8-13

  The remnant of Judah, against God's command, has fled to Egypt for safety, dragging Jeremiah with them. And there, in Egypt, God gives Jeremiah a sign. He is to hide large stones in the pavement at the...

• No. 1623 Jeremiah 37:16-21

  Jeremiah has been thrown into a dungeon and kept there many days. King Zedekiah secretly sends for him and asks, is there any word from the LORD? Jeremiah gives no softened answer to please the king who holds...

• No. 1635 Jeremiah 22:24-30

  God pronounces judgment on King Coniah, also called Jehoiachin, of Judah. Though you were the signet ring on my right hand, God says, I would pull you off; I will give you into the hand of Babylon, cast you...

• No. 1648 Jeremiah 42:1-6

  The remnant of Judah, after the fall of Jerusalem, comes to Jeremiah in fear, uncertain whether to stay in the land or flee. They ask him earnestly to pray for them, that God would show them the way to go; and...

• No. 1659 Jeremiah 36:15-19

  Baruch has read aloud the scroll of Jeremiah's words, and now the princes ask him to read it again in their hearing. When they have heard all the words, they turn to one another in fear, and say they must...

• No. 1668 Jeremiah 30:18-24

  In the middle of Jeremiah's oracles of judgment comes a promise of restoration. The LORD says he will restore the fortunes of Jacob, rebuild the city on its mound, and fill it again with thanksgiving and the...

• No. 1675 Jeremiah 28:1-9

  The prophet Hananiah stands up in the temple with a comforting message: within two years, he declares in the LORD's name, God will break the yoke of Babylon and bring back the exiles and the temple vessels. It...

• No. 1702 Jeremiah 38:23-28

  King Zedekiah has secretly summoned Jeremiah to hear God's word, and Jeremiah has told him plainly: surrender to Babylon and live, or resist and see the city burned. But Zedekiah is afraid, afraid of the...

• No. 1718 Jeremiah 51:58-64

  Jeremiah pronounces the fall of Babylon, the broad walls thrown down, the high gates burned. Then he enacts a sign. He writes all the evil to come upon Babylon in a book, and gives it to Seraiah, who is going...

• No. 1719 Jeremiah 4:1-6

  God calls Israel to return, and to return in truth. If you will return to me, he says, and put away your abominations, then you will not be removed. And he gives the call vivid images. Break up your fallow...

• No. 1752 Jeremiah 13:6-11

  God had told Jeremiah to bury a linen belt by the Euphrates; now, after many days, he sends him to dig it up, and the belt is ruined, good for nothing. God explains the sign: so I will ruin the pride of Judah...

• No. 1762 Jeremiah 17:17-27

  In the midst of his trials, Jeremiah prays a short and steadying line: do not be a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of evil. Then the LORD sends him to the gates of Jerusalem with a message to the...

• No. 1819 Jeremiah 29:15-19

  God speaks judgment against those who remained in Jerusalem, refusing the exile and clinging to false hopes and false prophets. He will send sword, famine, and plague upon them, and make them like rotten figs...

• No. 1831 Jeremiah 49:34-39

  Among Jeremiah's oracles against the nations comes one concerning Elam, a people far to the east. God declares judgment: he will break the strength of Elam, scatter them to the four winds, bring the sword...

• No. 1832 Jeremiah 33:1-9

  The word of the LORD comes to Jeremiah a second time while he is still shut up in the court of the guard, a prisoner. And God, who made the earth and formed it, gives him an invitation: call to me, and I will...

• No. 1857 Jeremiah 26:17-24

  Jeremiah's life is in danger, for his words of judgment have enraged the priests and prophets, who call for his death. But some of the elders rise up and speak in his defense, recalling how the prophet Micah...

• No. 1869 Jeremiah 34:6-11

  With Babylon's army besieging Jerusalem, King Zedekiah leads the people in a covenant before God: everyone is to free their Hebrew slaves, to hold no fellow Jew in bondage. And they obey; the princes and all...

• No. 1896 Jeremiah 13:12-27

  In a series of hard warnings, Jeremiah confronts a people so settled in their sin that they cannot turn from it. He pleads them toward humility, and then names their condition with a stark question: can the...

• No. 1897 Jeremiah 32:36-44

  To a city about to fall to Babylon, God speaks a promise of restoration. I will gather them from all the countries where I drove them, he says, and bring them back to dwell safely; they will be my people, and...

• No. 1907 Jeremiah 32:30-35

  God recounts the long history of his people's sin: from their youth they have done evil, provoked him, turned their backs and not their faces to him, though he taught them again and again. They defiled his...

• No. 1909 Jeremiah 16:8-13

  God tells Jeremiah that judgment is coming, that the sounds of joy and celebration, the voices of bride and bridegroom, will cease from the land. And he foretells the people's reaction: when you tell them...

• No. 1929 Jeremiah 50:33-46

  Israel and Judah are oppressed together, held fast by captors who refuse to let them go. But God speaks a word of hope over the oppressed: their Redeemer is strong; the LORD of Armies is his name. He will...

• No. 1936 Jeremiah 14:10-16

  God tells Jeremiah that he will not accept this wandering people, and even instructs him not to pray for their good. Jeremiah objects: but the prophets tell them they will see no sword or famine, that God will...

• No. 1964 Jeremiah 24:1-10

  God shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs set before the temple: one of very good figs, ripe and fine, the other of figs so bad they cannot be eaten. And God interprets: the good figs are the exiles, those...

• No. 2028 Jeremiah 11:1-5

  God sends Jeremiah to remind Judah of the covenant he made with their fathers when he brought them out of Egypt. At the heart of that covenant is a promise of relationship: obey my voice and do all that I...

• No. 2094 Jeremiah 52:1-5

  The final chapter of Jeremiah recounts the fall of Jerusalem under its last king, Zedekiah. He began to reign at twenty-one, and he did what was evil in the LORD's sight, according to all that Jehoiakim had...

• No. 2128 Jeremiah 14:1-9

  A severe drought grips the land, and Jeremiah describes the misery: the ground cracked, the cisterns empty, the nobles' servants returning ashamed with no water, even the animals suffering. And out of this...

• No. 2201 Jeremiah 31:7-14

  In a season of exile and grief, Jeremiah is given a promise of restoration overflowing with joy. God will gather his scattered people from the ends of the earth, lead them by streams of water, shepherd them...

• No. 2224 Jeremiah 51:17-23

  In his prophecy against Babylon, Jeremiah contrasts the worthless idols with the living God. Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, he says; they are falsehood, with no breath in them, vanity, a work of...

• No. 2239 Jeremiah 23:25-29

  God speaks against the false prophets who prophesy lies in his name, telling their own dreams and the deceit of their own hearts. He draws a sharp line between their empty inventions and his true word. Let the...

• No. 2260 Jeremiah 26:12-16

  Jeremiah stands on trial for his life. The priests and prophets have demanded his death for prophesying against the city. And Jeremiah, facing execution, does not recant or beg for his life. He calmly repeats...

• No. 2262 Jeremiah 25:12-16

  God has been using Babylon as the instrument of his judgment on Judah and the nations. But now he declares what will happen to Babylon itself. When seventy years are complete, God says, I will punish the king...

• No. 2278 Jeremiah 16:14-21

  Amid words of judgment and promised restoration, Jeremiah is given a vision of the nations coming to God. The nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, the prophet says to the LORD, and will say,...

• No. 2298 Jeremiah 19:7-15

  God sends Jeremiah with a vivid sign: he is to break a potter's clay flask before the people, declaring that God will so break this people and this city that it cannot be mended. And God gives the reason for...

• No. 2329 Jeremiah 5:7-11

  God speaks through Jeremiah of his people's unfaithfulness, and the language he uses is that of a betrayed marriage. How can I pardon you? he asks; your children have forsaken me and sworn by what are no gods....

• No. 2355 Jeremiah 6:21-30

  Jeremiah warns Judah of a cruel army massing from the north, and then shifts to a furnace image. God had set him among the people as a tester of metals, to know and try their way. But the assaying comes up...

• No. 2387 Jeremiah 41:1-8

  Jeremiah records an act of cold treachery. Ishmael, a man of royal blood, comes to Gedaliah, the governor Babylon had appointed, and they eat bread together at Mizpah. Then Ishmael rises from the meal and...

• No. 2429 Jeremiah 4:19-31

  Jeremiah cannot keep his composure. My anguish, my anguish, he cries; his heart pounds at the sound of the war trumpet, and he sees a vision of the land undone, the earth waste and void again, the heavens...

• No. 2446 Jeremiah 35:12-19

  God sends Jeremiah to point at an unlikely example. The Rechabites, a clan whose ancestor Jonadab told them never to drink wine, have kept that command for generations; to this day, they drink none. God holds...

• No. 2460 Jeremiah 31:23-29

  In the middle of Jeremiah's book of comfort, God promises to reverse Judah's captivity and restore ordinary, good life: farmers and shepherds back in the land, people again blessing one another. He says, I...

• No. 2481 Jeremiah 34:1-5

  Babylon's army surrounds Jerusalem, and God sends Jeremiah to King Zedekiah with a word that is mostly grim: the city will be given to Babylon and burned, and you will not escape; you will be captured, brought...

• No. 2606 Jeremiah 40:6-10

  After Jerusalem falls, Jeremiah is given a choice: he can go to Babylon and be cared for, or stay in the ruined land. He chooses to stay. He goes to Gedaliah at Mizpah and lives there among the people who were...

• No. 2609 Jeremiah 25:1-6

  Jeremiah stands before Judah and does the math out loud. For twenty-three years, he says, from the thirteenth year of Josiah until now, the word of the LORD has come to me, and I have spoken to you, and you...

• No. 2647 Jeremiah 51:49-57

  Jeremiah announces the fall of Babylon, the seemingly invincible empire. Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, he says, and fortify her strongholds to the heights, destroyers will still come to her from...

• No. 2667 Jeremiah 8:1-16

  Jeremiah surveys a people in headlong decline and puts his finger on what is missing. Do people fall and not get up? he asks; does someone turn away and not return? Yet this people keeps backsliding and clings...

• No. 2677 Jeremiah 35:6-11

  The Rechabites explain to Jeremiah why they will not drink the wine he sets before them. Generations ago, our ancestor Jonadab commanded us to drink no wine, to build no houses, to plant no vineyards, but to...

• No. 2698 Jeremiah 37:6-10

  Jerusalem is under Babylonian siege, and for a moment the pressure lifts: Pharaoh's army marches out of Egypt, and the Chaldeans pull back to meet it. King Zedekiah sends to Jeremiah, hoping the prophet will...

• No. 2743 Jeremiah 34:12-16

  With Jerusalem under siege, the people made a solemn covenant to free their Hebrew slaves, exactly as the old law required, and for a moment they did the right thing. Then they turned around and forced the...

• No. 2756 Jeremiah 38:6-10

  Jeremiah's enemies get their way. They lower the prophet by ropes into a cistern to be rid of him, a pit with no water, only mud, and Jeremiah sinks down into the mire and is left to die. His own countrymen...

• No. 2767 Jeremiah 5:12-17

  The people have talked themselves out of God's warnings. It is not he, they say; no disaster will reach us, we will see neither sword nor famine; the prophets are only wind, there is no word in them. So God...

• No. 2770 Jeremiah 38:1-5

  Jeremiah keeps saying the same unwelcome thing during the siege: whoever stays in the city will die by sword, famine, or plague, but whoever surrenders to Babylon will live; the city will surely fall. To the...

• No. 2784 Jeremiah 32:13-23

  With Jerusalem about to fall to Babylon, God tells Jeremiah to do something that looks absurd: buy a field, and store the sealed deed in a clay jar so it will last many days. It is a sign, God says: houses and...

• No. 2812 Jeremiah 46:13-28

  This is a long word about Nebuchadnezzar coming against Egypt. Her soldiers are swept away and cannot stand; her Pharaoh is dismissed as merely a noise, a king who let the appointed moment slip past. Egypt,...

• No. 2821 Jeremiah 6:9-15

  Jeremiah is worn thin. To whom can I speak, he asks, that they will listen? Their ears are closed, God's word has become an offense to them, and they take no delight in it. He is so full of the LORD's wrath...

• No. 2892 Jeremiah 52:12-16

  The end that the prophets had warned of for decades finally comes. Nebuzaradan, the captain of Babylon's guard, enters Jerusalem and burns the house of the LORD, the king's palace, and every important house in...

• No. 2944 Jeremiah 48:17-32

  This is an oracle against Moab. The mourners are called to lament the broken staff; city after city is named and laid waste; Moab's horn is cut off and his arm broken. And the reason is stated plainly: Moab...

• No. 3030 Jeremiah 50:17-32

  God pictures Israel as a hunted sheep, mauled first by Assyria and then by Babylon, its bones broken. So, he says, I will punish the king of Babylon as I punished Assyria, and I will bring Israel back to his...

• No. 3039 Jeremiah 18:1-10

  God sends Jeremiah down to the potter's house, where he watches the potter work. When the vessel he is shaping is spoiled in his hands, the potter simply reworks the same clay into another vessel, as seems...

• No. 3050 Jeremiah 36:1-7

  God tells Jeremiah to take a scroll and write down all the words he has spoken against Israel and Judah, from the beginning until now. And he gives the reason: it may be that the house of Judah will hear all...

• No. 3072 Jeremiah 35:1-5

  God sends Jeremiah to the Rechabites, a clan who, in obedience to a command of their ancestor Jonadab, drank no wine and lived a simple, disciplined life. Jeremiah is told to bring them into a room of the...

• No. 3105 Jeremiah 7:27-34

  God tells Jeremiah that the people will not listen; truth has perished and been cut off from their mouths. They have defiled the temple with their idols, and worse, they have built high places at Topheth to...

• No. 3124 Jeremiah 36:27-32

  King Jehoiakim has taken Jeremiah's scroll of warnings, cut it apart, and burned it piece by piece in the fire. And the word of the LORD comes to Jeremiah: take another scroll, and write on it all the former...

• No. 3174 Jeremiah 29:1-14

  Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles carried off to Babylon, and God's word to them is surprising. Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit; marry, have children, multiply. Seek the...

• No. 3196 Jeremiah 29:20-32

  In a hard sequel to his letter, Jeremiah pronounces God's judgment on false prophets among the exiles, men who prophesied lies in God's name, and on Shemaiah, who wrote from Babylon urging the priests to...

• No. 3218 Jeremiah 51:24-32

  God pronounces judgment on Babylon, which he calls the destroying mountain that destroys all the earth. I am against you, he says; I will make you a burned-out mountain, desolate forever. He summons the...

• No. 3260 Jeremiah 14:17-22

  Jeremiah weeps day and night over the wound of his people, the daughter of Zion broken with a grievous blow. And the people at last pray a true prayer: we acknowledge, LORD, our wickedness and the iniquity of...

• No. 3271 Jeremiah 7:1-11

  Jeremiah stands in the gate of the temple and confronts a dangerous false confidence. Do not trust in the lying words, he says, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, as though the building itself...

• No. 3278 Jeremiah 20:1-18

  Pashhur the priest strikes Jeremiah and locks him in the stocks for prophesying. Released, Jeremiah pronounces judgment, and then pours out an unusually honest lament. You have persuaded me, and I was...

• No. 3299 Jeremiah 3:6-10

  God speaks of Israel and Judah as two sisters, using the painful image of marital unfaithfulness to describe their idolatry, chasing after other gods as a spouse might betray a marriage. Israel had been so...

• No. 3329 Jeremiah 2:1-16

  God speaks with the ache of a wounded love. He remembers the devotion of Israel's youth, her bridal love, how she followed him through the wilderness in a land not sown. And then the heartbreak: they left him....

• No. 3331 Jeremiah 46:1-12

  This oracle pictures Egypt marching out proudly to war, harnessing horses, polishing spears, rising like the flooding Nile with the boast, I will rise up, I will cover the earth, I will destroy cities. And...

• No. 3363 Jeremiah 40:11-16

  After the fall of Jerusalem, a fragile new beginning forms under Gedaliah, the governor Babylon has appointed, and the scattered survivors gather to him with hope, bringing in the wine and summer fruit. But...

• No. 3364 Jeremiah 32:6-12

  With Jerusalem under siege and about to fall, and Jeremiah himself imprisoned in the court of the guard, God tells him to do something that looks absurd: buy a field. He purchases his cousin's land at...

• No. 3409 Jeremiah 6:16-20

  God's appeal is gentle and wise: stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. He calls his people to seek the...

• No. 3411 Jeremiah 9:12-16

  The question is asked, why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness? And God gives the answer plainly: because they forsook my law, did not obey my voice, but followed the stubbornness of their own...

• No. 3487 Jeremiah 25:17-26

  Jeremiah is given a symbolic cup of God's wrath and told to make all the nations drink it. He begins with Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, then Egypt, the Philistines, Edom, Moab, Tyre, and on through a long...

• No. 3524 Jeremiah 26:1-6

  God sends Jeremiah to stand in the temple court and proclaim his word to all who come to worship, and he gives a striking instruction: do not hold back a word. Jeremiah is to deliver the message in full, not...

• No. 3525 Jeremiah 32:1-5

  Jeremiah is shut up in the court of the guard, imprisoned by his own king for the crime of telling the truth. Zedekiah cannot bear his message, that the city will fall to Babylon and the king himself be...

• No. 3561 Jeremiah 22:18-23

  God pronounces a bleak judgment on King Jehoiakim, who will be given the burial of a donkey, dragged out and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem, no one to mourn him. But the heart of the indictment is a single...

• No. 3593 Jeremiah 7:12-19

  God points to Shiloh, where his sanctuary once stood before it was destroyed, and warns: I will do to this temple you trust in as I did to Shiloh. The people trusted in the temple building as a guarantee of...

• No. 3613 Jeremiah 43:1-7

  After Jeremiah faithfully delivers God's word, do not go to Egypt, but stay in the land and you will be safe, the proud leaders reject it outright, accusing him of lying and of being manipulated by his scribe...

• No. 3658 Jeremiah 28:10-17

  The false prophet Hananiah publicly breaks the wooden yoke Jeremiah wore as a sign, and proclaims that God will break Babylon's yoke within two years, telling the people exactly what they wanted to hear. But...

• No. 3663 Jeremiah 52:24-28

  This is a grim record of the final blows of the exile: the chief priest, the leading officials, and others taken and executed at Riblah, and the people of Judah carried away captive out of their land. The...

• No. 3670 Jeremiah 23:1-6

  God pronounces woe on the false shepherds, the leaders who scattered and neglected his flock instead of caring for them. But he promises to gather the remnant himself and to set over them true shepherds who...

• No. 3722 Jeremiah 1:6-10

  Called to be a prophet, Jeremiah shrinks back with a very human excuse: ah, Lord GOD, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth. But God does not accept the excuse. Do not say, I am only a youth, he...

• No. 3774 Jeremiah 50:1-16

  This long oracle announces the fall of proud Babylon and the shaming of her idols, Bel and Merodach, that could not save her. But in the middle of the judgment comes a tender word about God's own people: in...

• No. 3800 Jeremiah 39:13-18

  As Jerusalem falls, Jeremiah is set free from prison, and God sends him with a special word for one man: Ebed-melech the Ethiopian. Earlier, this foreign servant had risked himself to rescue Jeremiah from the...

• No. 3834 Jeremiah 10:11-25

  Jeremiah sets the living God against the lifeless idols. The idols, he says, will perish, for they did not make the heavens; but the true God made the earth by his power, established the world by his wisdom,...

• No. 3857 Jeremiah 27:8-15

  Jeremiah brings a hard and unpopular word: God has, for a time, given the nations into the hand of Babylon, and the way of life is to submit to that yoke, not to resist it. Bring your necks under the yoke of...

• No. 3890 Jeremiah 22:6-10

  God pronounces judgment on the royal house of Judah, once flourishing like the forests of Gilead and Lebanon, now to become a desolate wilderness. And Jeremiah imagines the nations passing by the ruined city...

• No. 3982 Jeremiah 51:1-16

  This long oracle announces the coming fall of proud Babylon, the empire that had conquered Judah. But in the middle of the pronouncement of Babylon's doom comes a tender word about God's own people: Israel and...

• No. 3997 Jeremiah 2:17-32

  Through Jeremiah, God expresses a wounded astonishment at his people. He had rescued them, planted them like a choice vine, been a faithful God to them, and yet they had forsaken him, turning to worthless...

• No. 4027 Jeremiah 15:1-10

  This is a heavy chapter, in which God declares that judgment on his persistently rebellious people is now fixed. But at the end of it, Jeremiah, the faithful prophet who must deliver this hard word, gives...

• No. 4047 Jeremiah 45:1-5

  Baruch, Jeremiah's faithful scribe, is worn down and discouraged: woe is me, he laments, for the LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and find no rest. Serving alongside a prophet of...

• No. 4062 Jeremiah 39:8-12

  As Jerusalem falls and is burned, and its people are carried into exile, one man is singled out for care. Nebuchadnezzar, the conquering king, gives specific orders concerning the prophet Jeremiah: take him,...

• No. 4066 Jeremiah 27:1-7

  God has Jeremiah wear a yoke as a sign and send word to the surrounding kings, and the message rests on a sweeping claim of God's sovereignty: it is I who by my great power and outstretched arm have made the...

• No. 4100 Jeremiah 9:7-11

  God brings a charge against his people that centers on their speech: their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks deceit; with his mouth each speaks peaceably to his neighbor, but in his heart he plans an ambush....

• No. 4123 Jeremiah 3:11-18

  Through Jeremiah, God calls his wayward, unfaithful people back to himself, and the tone is astonishingly tender for a people who had betrayed him. Return, faithless Israel, he says; I will not look on you in...

• No. 4131 Jeremiah 36:20-26

  King Jehoiakim, when Jeremiah's words are read to him, responds not with repentance but with contempt. As each few columns are read, he cuts the scroll with a knife and throws it into the fire, until the whole...

• No. 4204 Jeremiah 9:1-6

  Jeremiah, called to announce judgment on his people, does not do so with cold detachment or grim satisfaction. Instead he weeps. Oh that my head were waters, he cries, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I...

• No. 4206 Jeremiah 39:1-7

  This passage records the fall of Jerusalem, the catastrophe Jeremiah had warned of for decades. After a long siege, the Babylonians break through the wall; King Zedekiah flees but is captured, and terrible...

• No. 4237 Jeremiah 6:1-8

  Jeremiah warns of coming judgment on Jerusalem, a city whose wickedness pours out like water from a well, full of violence and oppression. But in the midst of the warning comes a poignant plea from God's own...

• No. 4251 Jeremiah 4:13-18

  As invading armies bear down on Jerusalem like a whirlwind, God's word cuts past the external threat to the real problem: O Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall...

• No. 4260 Jeremiah 32:24-29

  As the Babylonians build their siege ramps against Jerusalem and the city is about to fall, Jeremiah is puzzled. God has just told him to buy a field, a sign of future restoration, at the very moment when...