1After there had been no rain in Judah for a long time, Yahweh gave me this message:
2The people in Judah are very distressed;
3The rich people send their servants to wells to get water,
4The ground is extremely dry and cracked open
5Even the ◄does/female deer► abandon their newborn babies/fawns
6The wild donkeys stand on the barren hills,
7The people say, “Yahweh, we have turned away from you and sinned many times,
8You are the one whom we Israelis confidently expect to do good things for us
9Are you also surprised about the terrible things that are happening to us?
10And this is what Yahweh says to those people:
11Then Yahweh said to me, “Do not pray for these people any more.
12When they ◄fast/abstain from food in order to honor me►, I will not pay any attention. When they bring to me their offerings of animals to be completely burned on the altar and their offerings of grain, I will not accept them. Instead, I will get rid of them by wars, by famines, and by diseases.”
13Then I replied to him, “Yahweh my God, their prophets are telling the people that they will not experience wars [MTY] or famines. They are telling the people that you will surely allow us to have peace in our land for many years.”
14Yahweh replied to me, “Those prophets say that they are speaking what I tell them to say [MTY], but they are telling lies. I did not send them, so what they are saying is false. They say that they have received visions from me, and that they are telling things that I have revealed to them, but that is not true. They are saying foolish things that they have only thought of themselves.
15So this is what I say about those prophets who are predicting what will happen, saying that I told them those things: They are saying that we Israelis will not die from wars or famines, but I did not send those prophets. And they themselves will die from wars or from famines.
16And the people to whom they are predicting these things, they and their wives and their sons and their daughters, will also die from wars or from famines. Their corpses will be thrown into the streets of Jerusalem, and there will not be anyone to bury them. I will punish them like they deserve to be punished.
17So, Jeremiah, tell this to them about yourself:
18If I go out into the fields,
19Then I prayed this:
20Yahweh, we admit/know that we are wicked people,
21But Yahweh, in order that we may honor [MTY] you,
22Those idols that have been brought from other nations certainly cannot [RHQ] bring rain to us,