Micaiah kept on: “I’m not done yet; listen to God’s word: I saw God enthroned, and all the angel armies of heaven Standing at attention ranged on his right and his left. And God said, ‘How can we seduce Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead?’ Some said this, and some said that. Then a bold angel stepped out, stood before God, and said, ‘I’ll seduce him.’ ‘And how will you do it?’ said God. ‘Easy,’ said the angel, ‘I’ll get all the prophets to lie.’ ‘That should do it,’ said God. ‘On your way—seduce him!’ “And that’s what has happened. God filled the mouths of your puppet prophets with seductive lies. God has pronounced your doom.”
Jeremiah 7:2The Message
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38 Cross References
Listen to the Message that God is sending your way, House of Israel. Listen most carefully: “Don’t take the godless nations as your models. Don’t be impressed by their glamour and glitz, no matter how much they’re impressed. The religion of these peoples is nothing but smoke. An idol is nothing but a tree chopped down, then shaped by a woodsman’s ax. They trim it with tinsel and balls, use hammer and nails to keep it upright. It’s like a scarecrow in a cabbage patch—can’t talk! Deadwood that has to be carried—can’t walk! Don’t be impressed by such stuff. It’s useless for either good or evil.”
God continued: “Preach all this in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. Say, ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and carry them out! I warned your ancestors when I delivered them from Egypt and I’ve kept up the warnings. I haven’t quit warning them for a moment. I warned them from morning to night: “Obey me or else!” But they didn’t obey. They paid no attention to me. They did whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it, until finally I stepped in and ordered the punishments set out in the covenant, which, despite all my warnings, they had ignored.’”
Then Jeremiah left Topheth, where God had sent him to preach the sermon, and took his stand in the court of God’s Temple and said to the people, “This is the Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies to you: ‘Warning! Danger! I’m bringing down on this city and all the surrounding towns the doom that I have pronounced. They’re set in their ways and won’t budge. They refuse to do a thing I say.’”
Hear God’s Message, House of Jacob! Yes, you—House of Israel! God’s Message: “What did your ancestors find fault with in me that they drifted so far from me, Took up with Sir Windbag and turned into windbags themselves? It never occurred to them to say, ‘Where’s God, the God who got us out of Egypt, Who took care of us through thick and thin, those rough-and-tumble wilderness years of parched deserts and death valleys, A land that no one who enters comes out of, a cruel, inhospitable land?’
“God’s Message: Stand in the court of God’s Temple and preach to the people who come from all over Judah to worship in God’s Temple. Say everything I tell you to say to them. Don’t hold anything back. Just maybe they’ll listen and turn back from their bad lives. Then I’ll reconsider the disaster that I’m planning to bring on them because of their evil behavior.
Prophet Jeremiah stood up to prophet Hananiah in front of the priests and all the people who were in God’s Temple that day. Prophet Jeremiah said, “Wonderful! Would that it were true—that God would validate your preaching by bringing the Temple furnishings and all the exiles back from Babylon. But listen to me, listen closely. Listen to what I tell both you and all the people here today: The old prophets, the ones before our time, preached judgment against many countries and kingdoms, warning of war and disaster and plague. So any prophet who preaches that everything is just fine and there’s nothing to worry about stands out like a sore thumb. We’ll wait and see. If it happens, it happens—and then we’ll know that God sent him.”
“‘But listen, O Zedekiah king of Judah, to the rest of the Message of God. You won’t be killed. You’ll die a peaceful death. They will honor you with funeral rites as they honored your ancestors, the kings who preceded you. They will properly mourn your death, weeping, “Master, master!” This is a solemn promise. God’s Decree.’”
Jeremiah kept going, but now zeroed in on the women: “Listen, all you who are from Judah and living in Egypt—please, listen to God’s Word. God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘You women! You said it and then you did it. You said, “We’re going to keep the vows we made to sacrifice to the Queen of Heaven and pour out offerings to her, and nobody’s going to stop us!”’
“So listen to God’s Word. You tell me, ‘Don’t preach to Israel. Don’t say anything against the family of Isaac.’ But here’s what God is telling you: Your wife will become a whore in town. Your children will get killed. Your land will be auctioned off. You will die homeless and friendless. And Israel will be hauled off to exile, far from home.”
Then I said: “Listen, leaders of Jacob, leaders of Israel: Don’t you know anything of justice? Haters of good, lovers of evil: Isn’t justice in your job description? But you skin my people alive. You rip the meat off their bones. You break up the bones, chop the meat, and throw it in a pot for cannibal stew.”
The leaders of Jacob and the leaders of Israel are Leaders contemptuous of justice, who twist and distort right living, Leaders who build Zion by killing people, who expand Jerusalem by committing crimes. Judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder, priests mass-market their teaching, prophets preach for high fees, All the while posturing and pretending dependence on God: “We’ve got God on our side. He’ll protect us from disaster.” Because of people like you, Zion will be turned back into farmland, Jerusalem end up as a pile of rubble, and instead of the Temple on the mountain, a few scraggly scrub pines.
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