Jeremiah 18:7-17

7 At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,
8 but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.
9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,
10 but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.
11 Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.
12 But they say, "It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will."
13 Therefore thus says the Lord: Ask among the nations: Who has heard the like of this? The virgin Israel has done a most horrible thing.
14 Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams?
15 But my people have forgotten me, they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway,
16 making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever. All who pass by it are horrified and shake their heads.
17 Like the wind from the east, I will scatter them before the enemy. I will show them my back, not my face, in the day of their calamity.

Footnotes 4

  • [a]. Cn: Heb [of the field]
  • [b]. Cn: Heb [foreign]
  • [c]. Cn: Heb [Are . . . plucked up?]
  • [d]. Gk Syr Vg: Heb [they made them stumble]
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.