If you do, I will force Israel to leave the land I have given them, and I will leave this Temple that I have made holy. All the nations will make fun of Israel and speak evil about them.
If the Temple is destroyed, everyone who passes by will be shocked. They will make fun of you and ask, ‘Why did the Lord do this terrible thing to this land and this Temple?’
Nebuchadnezzar and his army set fire to God’s Temple and broke down Jerusalem’s wall and burned all the palaces. They took or destroyed every valuable thing in Jerusalem.
But our ancestors made the God of heaven angry, so he handed them over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who destroyed this Temple and took the people to Babylon as captives.
But you must obey me and keep the Sabbath day as a holy day. You must not carry any loads into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. If you don’t obey me, I will start a fire at the gates of Jerusalem, and it will burn until it burns even the strong towers. And it will not be put out.’ ”
How dare you prophesy in the name of the Lord that this Temple will be destroyed like the one at Shiloh! How dare you say that Jerusalem will become a desert without anyone to live in it!” And all the people crowded around Jeremiah in the Temple of the Lord.
This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said: “Jeremiah, go to Zedekiah king of Judah and tell him: ‘This is what the Lord says: I will soon hand the city of Jerusalem over to the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down!
I will give the order, says the Lord, to bring the Babylonian army back to Jerusalem. It will fight against Jerusalem, capture it, set it on fire, and burn it down. I will destroy the towns in Judah so that they become ruins where no one lives!”
Even if you defeated all of the Babylonian army that is attacking you and there were only a few injured men left in their tents, they would come from their tents and burn down Jerusalem!”
eighty men came to Mizpah bringing grain offerings and incense to the Temple of the Lord. Those men from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria had shaved off their beards, torn their clothes, and cut themselves.
So I will destroy the place where I have chosen to be worshiped in Jerusalem. You trust in that place, which I gave to you and your ancestors, but I will destroy it just as I destroyed Shiloh.
The enemy reached out and took all her precious things. She even saw foreigners enter her Temple. The Lord had commanded foreigners never to enter the meeting place of his people.
The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his Temple. He has handed over to the enemy the walls of Jerusalem’s palaces. Their uproar in the Lord’s Temple was like that of a feast day.
The Lord said to the man dressed in linen, “Go in between the wheels under the living creatures, fill your hands with coals of fire from between the living creatures, and scatter the coals over the city.” As I watched, the man with linen clothes went in.
They will burn down your houses and will punish you in front of many women. I will put an end to your sexual sins, and you will no longer pay your lovers.
Because of you, Jerusalem will be plowed like a field. The city will become a pile of rocks, and the hill on which the Temple stands will be covered with bushes.