1. The sin of Judah is engraved with an iron chiselon their stone-hard hearts.It is inscribed with a diamond point on the horns of their altars.
2. Their children are always thinking about their altarsand their sacred poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah,set up beside the green trees on the high hills
3. and on the mountains and in the fields.I will give your wealth and all your treasures away as plunder.I will give it away as the price for the sins you have committed throughout your land.
4. You will lose your hold on the landwhich I gave to you as a permanent possession.I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you know nothing about.For you have made my anger burn like a fire that will never be put out.”
5. The Lord says,“I will put a curse on people who trust in mere human beings,who depend on mere flesh and blood for their strength,and whose hearts have turned away from the Lord.
6. They will be like a shrub in the desert.They will not experience good things even when they happen.It will be as though they were growing in the desert,in a salt land where no one can live.
7. My blessing is on those people who trust in me,who put their confidence in me.
8. They will be like a tree planted near a streamwhose roots spread out toward the water.It has nothing to fear when the heat comes.Its leaves are always green.It has no need to be concerned in a year of drought.It does not stop bearing fruit.
9. The human mind is more deceitful than anything else.It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?
10. I, the Lord, probe into people’s minds.I examine people’s hearts.I deal with each person according to how he has behaved.I give them what they deserve based on what they have done.
11. The person who gathers wealth by unjust meansis like the partridge that broods over eggs but does not hatch them.Before his life is half over he will lose his ill-gotten gains.At the end of his life it will be clear he was a fool.”
12. Then I said, “Lord, from the very beginning you have been seated on your glorious throne on high.You are the place where we can find refuge.
13. You are the one in whom Israel may find hope.All who leave you will suffer shame.Those who turn away from you will be consigned to the nether world.For they have rejected you, the Lord, the fountain of life.