Tanakh, Bible & Qu'ran: The Pillars of Three Faiths. Various Authors

their bow of falsehood;And they are grown mighty in the land, but not for truth;For they proceed from evil to evil,And Me they know not,Saith the Lord.³Take ye heed every one of his neighbour,And trust ye not in any brother;For every brother acteth subtly,And every neighbour goeth about with slanders.⁴And they deceive every one his neighbour,And truth they speak not;They have taught their tongue to speak lies,They weary themselves to commit iniquity.⁵Thy habitation is in the midst of deceit;Through deceit they refuse to know Me,Saith the Lord. ⁶Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts:Behold, I will smelt them, and try them;For how else should I do,Because of the daughter of My people?⁷Their tongue is a sharpened arrow,It speaketh deceit;One speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth,But in his heart he layeth wait for him.⁸Shall I not punish them for these things?Saith the Lord;Shall not My soul be avengedOn such a nation as this? ⁹For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing,And for the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation,Because they are burned up, so that none passeth through,And they hear not the voice of the cattle;Both the fowl of the heavens and the beastAre fled, and gone.¹⁰And I will make Jerusalem heaps,A lair of jackals; And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation,Without an inhabitant. ¹¹Who is the wise man, that he may understand this?And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it?Wherefore is the land perishedAnd laid waste like a wilderness, so that none passeth through?¹² And the Lord saith:Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them,And have not hearkened to My voice, neither walked therein;¹³ But have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart,And after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them.¹⁴Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood,And give them water of gall to drink.¹⁵I will scatter them also among the nations,Whom neither they nor their fathers have known;And I will send the sword after them,Till I have consumed them. ¹⁶Thus saith the Lord of hosts:Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come;And send for the wise women, that they may come;¹⁷let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us,That our eyes may run down with tears,And our eyelids gush out with waters.¹⁸For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion:'How are we undone!We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land,Because our dwellings have cast us out.'¹⁹Yea, hear the word of the Lord, O ye women,And let your ear receive the word of His mouth,And teach your daughters wailing,And every one her neighbour lamentation:²⁰'For death is come up into our windows,It is entered into our palaces,To cut off the children from the street,And the young men from the broad places.—²¹Speak: Thus saith the Lord—And the carcasses of men fallAs dung upon the open field,And as the handful after the harvestman,Which none gathereth.' ²²Thus saith the Lord:Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,Neither let the mighty man glory in his might,Let not the rich man glory in his riches;²³But let him that glorieth glory in this,That he understandeth, and knoweth Me,That I am the Lord who exercise mercy,Justice, and righteousness, in the earth;For in these things I delight,Saith the Lord.

       ²⁴Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will punish all them that are circumcised in their uncircumcision: ²⁵Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners of their hair polled, that dwell in the wilderness;

      For all the nations are uncircumcised,But all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.

       10Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel; ²thus saith the Lord:

      Learn not the way of the nations,And be not dismayed at the signs of heaven;For the nations are dismayed at them.³For the customs of the peoples are vanity;For it is but a tree which one cutteth out of the forest,The work of the hands of the workman with the axe.⁴They deck it with silver and with gold,They fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.⁵They are like a pillar in a garden of cucumbers, and speak not;They must needs be borne, because they cannot go.Be not afraid of them, for they cannot do evil,Neither is it in them to do good. ⁶There is none like unto Thee, O Lord;Thou art great, and Thy name is great in might.⁷Who would not fear Thee, O king of the nations?For it befitteth Thee;Forasmuch as among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their royalty,There is none like unto Thee.⁸But they are altogether brutish and foolish:The vanities by which they are instructed are but a stock;⁹Silver beaten into plates which is brought from Tarshish,And gold from Uphaz,The work of the craftsman and of the hands of the goldsmith;Blue and purple is their clothing;They are all the work of skilful men.¹⁰But the Lord God is the true God,He is the living God, and the everlasting King;At His wrath the earth trembleth,And the nations are not able to abide His indignation.

       ¹¹Thus shall ye say unto them: 'The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens.'

      ¹²He that hath made the earth by His power,That hath established the world by His wisdom,And hath stretched out the heavens by His understanding;¹³At the sound of His giving a multitude of waters in the heavens,When He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth;When He maketh lightnings with the rain,And bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries;¹⁴Every man is proved to be brutish, without knowledge,Every goldsmith is put to shame by the graven image,His molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.¹⁵They are vanity, a work of delusion;In the time of their visitation they shall perish.¹⁶Not like these is the portion of Jacob;For He is the former of all things,And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance;The Lord of hosts is His name. ¹⁷Gather up thy wares from the ground,O thou that abidest in the siege.

      ¹⁸For thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and will distress them, that they may feel it.

      ¹⁹Woe is me for my hurt!My wound is grievous;But I said: 'This is but a sickness,And I must bear it.'²⁰My tent is spoiled,And all my cords are broken;My children are gone forth of me, and they are not;There is none to stretch forth my tent any more,And to set up my curtains.²¹For the shepherds are become brutish,And have not inquired of the Lord;Therefore they have not prospered,And all their flocks are scattered.²²Hark! a report, behold, it cometh,And a great commotion out of the north country,To make the cities of Judah desolate,A dwelling-place of jackals.²³O Lord, I know that man's way is not his own;It is not in man to direct his steps as he walketh.²⁴O Lord, correct me, but in measure;Not in Thine anger, lest Thou diminish me.²⁵Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not,And upon the families that call not on Thy name;For they have devoured Jacob,Yea, they have devoured him and consumed him,And have laid waste his habitation.

       11The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: ²'Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; ³and say thou unto them: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this covenant, ⁴which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, saying: Hearken to My voice, and do them, according to all which I command you; so shall ye be My people, and I will be your God; ⁵that I may establish the oath which I swore unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day.' Then answered I, and said: 'Amen, O Lord.'

      ⁶And the Lord said unto me: 'Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying: Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them. ⁷For I earnestly forewarned your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even unto this day, forewarning betimes and often, saying: Hearken to My voice. ⁸Yet they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the stubbornness of their evil heart; therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did them not.'

      ⁹And the Lord said unto me: 'A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁰They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear My words; and they are gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of