At that time this message will be given to Judah and Jerusalem: “A hot wind blows from the bare hilltops of the desert toward the Lord’s people. It is not a gentle wind to separate grain from chaff.
You will throw them into the air, and the wind will carry them away; a windstorm will scatter them. Then you will be happy in the Lord; you will be proud of the Holy One of Israel.
All of us are dirty with sin. All the right things we have done are like filthy pieces of cloth. All of us are like dead leaves, and our sins, like the wind, have carried us away.
“Jeremiah, speak this message to the people of Judah: ‘Let my eyes be filled with tears night and day, without stopping. My people have received a terrible blow; they have been hurt badly.
Look, the punishment from the Lord will come like a storm. His anger will be like a hurricane. It will come swirling down on the heads of those wicked people.
Listen to the sound of my people. They cry from a faraway land: “Isn’t the Lord still in Jerusalem? Isn’t Jerusalem’s king still there?” But God says, “Why did the people make me angry by worshiping idols, useless foreign idols?”
So this is what the Lord All-Powerful says: “I will test the people of Judah as a person tests metal in a fire. I have no other choice, because my people have sinned.
My eyes have no more tears, and I am sick to my stomach. I feel empty inside, because my people have been destroyed. Children and babies are fainting in the streets of the city.
But it was pulled up by its roots in anger and thrown down to the ground. The east wind dried it up. Its fruit was torn off. Its strong branches were broken off and burned up.
Israel is doing well among the nations, but the Lord will send a wind from the east, coming from the desert, that will dry up his springs and wells of water. He will destroy from their treasure houses everything of value.
So those people will be like the morning mist; they will disappear like the morning dew. They will be like chaff blown from the threshing floor, like smoke going out a window.
He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out.”
He will come ready to clean the grain, separating the good grain from the chaff. He will put the good part of the grain into his barn, but he will burn the chaff with a fire that cannot be put out.”