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⁸ How can you say, ‘We are wise,
   and the law of the Lord is with us’,
when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes
   has made it into a lie?
⁹ The wise shall be put to shame,
   they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
   what wisdom is in them?
¹⁰ Therefore I will give their wives to others
   and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
   everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest
   everyone deals falsely.
¹¹ They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
   saying, ‘Peace, peace’,
   when there is no peace.
¹² They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
   yet they were not at all ashamed,
   they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
   at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,

says the Lord.
¹³ When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord,
   there are^* no grapes on the vine,
   nor figs on the fig tree;
even the leaves are withered,
   and what I gave them has passed away from them.^*

¹⁴ Why do we sit still?
Gather together, let us go into the fortified cities
   and perish there;
for the Lord our God has doomed us to perish,
   and has given us poisoned water to drink,
   because we have sinned against the Lord.
¹⁵ We look for peace, but find no good,
   for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

The Prophet Mourns for the People

¹⁸ My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
   my heart is sick.
¹⁹ Hark, the cry of my poor people
   from far and wide in the land:
‘Is the Lord not in Zion?
   Is her King not in her?’
(‘Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
   with their foreign idols?’)
²⁰ ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
   and we are not saved.’
²¹ For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
   I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

²² Is there no balm in Gilead?
   Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
   not been restored?

9^*O that my head were a spring of water,
   and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
   for the slain of my poor people!
^{2 *}O that I had in the desert
   a traveller’s lodging-place,
that I might leave my people
   and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
   a band of traitors.
³ They bend their tongues like bows;
   they have grown strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth;
for they proceed from evil to evil,
   and they do not know me, says the Lord.

⁴ Beware of your neighbours,
   and put no trust in any of your kin;^*
for all your kin^* are supplanters,
   and every neighbour goes around like a slanderer.
⁵ They all deceive their neighbours,
   and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongues to speak lies;
   they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.^*
6 Oppression upon oppression, deceit^* upon deceit!
   They refuse to know me, says the Lord.