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and we will do every one after the stubbornness of his evil heart.'

¹³Therefore thus saith the Lord:

Ask ye now among the nations,

Who hath heard such things;

The virgin of Israel hath done

A very horrible thing.

¹⁴Doth the snow of Lebanon fail

From the rock of the field?

Or are the strange cold flowing waters

Plucked up?

¹⁵For My people hath forgotten Me,

They offer unto vanity;

And they have been made to stumble in their ways,

In the ancient paths,

To walk in bypaths,

In a way not cast up;

¹⁶To make their land an astonishment,

And a perpetual hissing;

Every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished,

And shake his head.

¹⁷I will scatter them as with an east wind

Before the enemy;

I will look upon their back, and not their face,

In the day of their calamity.

 

¹⁸Then said they:

'Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah;

For instruction shall not perish from the priest,

Nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet.

Come, and let us smite him with the tongue,

And let us not give heed to any of his words.'

¹⁹Give heed to me, O Lord,

And hearken to the voice of them that contend with me.

²⁰Shall evil be recompensed for good?

For they have digged a pit for my soul.

Remember how I stood before Thee

To speak good for them,

To turn away Thy wrath from them.

²¹Therefore deliver up their children to the famine,

And hurl them to the power of the sword;

And let their wives be bereaved of their children, and widows;

And let their men be slain of death,

And their young men smitten of the sword in battle.

²²Let a cry be heard from their houses,

When thou shalt bring a troop suddenly upon them;

For they have digged a pit to take me,

And hid snares for my feet.

²³Yet, Lord, Thou knowest

All their counsel against me to slay me;

Forgive not their iniquity,

Neither blot out their sin from Thy sight;

But let them be made to stumble before Thee;

Deal Thou with them in the time of Thine anger.

19Thus said the Lord: Go, and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the elders of the people, and of the elders of the priests; ²and go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the gate Harsith, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee; ³and say: Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:

Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle; ⁴because they have forsak-

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