1Yahweh gave me another message. He said to me,
2“Go to the entrance of my temple, and give this message to the people:
3The Commander of the armies of angels says to you,
4But some people are repeatedly saying to you,
5I will act mercifully to you only if you change your behavior and stop doing evil things,
6and if you stop oppressing foreigners who live in your country, and orphans and widows,
7If you do what I have told you, I will allow you to stay in this land that I promised to your ancestors that it would belong to them and their descendants forever.
8People are repeatedly telling you, ‘The temple is here, so we are safe’,
9You think that [RHQ] you can steal things, murder people, commit adultery, tell lies in court, and worship Baal and all those other gods that you did not know about previously,
10and then come here and stand in front of this temple, which is my temple, and say ‘Nothing bad will happen to us!’,
11Do you realize that you are causing this temple, which is my temple, to become like [MET] a den where bandits hide [RHQ]?
12Long ago I put my Sacred Tent at Shiloh city, to be a place where people would worship me [MTY].
13And while you were continually doing those wicked things,
14Therefore, just like I destroyed Shiloh, I will now destroy this temple
15And I will expel you from this land and send you to other countries far away from me,
16Yahweh said to me, “Jeremiah, do not pray for these people any longer.
17Do you see the wicked things that they are doing in the streets of Jerusalem and in the other towns in Judah?
18The children gather firewood
19But I am not [RHQ] the one whom they are hurting;
20So Yahweh the Lord says this:
21Therefore, this is what the Commander of the armies of angels says:
22When I led your ancestors out of Egypt,
23What I told them was, ‘Obey me;
24But your ancestors would not pay any attention [DOU] to me.
25From the day that your ancestors left Egypt until now,
26But you, my people, have not listened to me or paid attention to what I said;
27Then Yahweh said to me, “When you tell all this to my people,
28Say to them, ‘You people of Judah have not obeyed Yahweh, your God;
29So, tell them to cut off their hair to show that they are mourning;
30Yahweh says this: “The people of Judah have done many things that I say are evil.
31They have built altars at Topheth in Ben-Hinnom Valley outside Jerusalem,
32So they should beware!
33The corpses of my people that are not buried and are left on the ground will be eaten by vultures and wild animals,
34There will be no one singing and laughing any more in the streets of Jerusalem;