Jeremiah 9:12-22

12Who is the person wise enough to understand this? Who has the Lord spoken to, that he may explain it? Why is the land destroyed and scorched like a wilderness, so no one can pass through?

13The Lord said, “It is because they abandoned my instruction, which I set before them, and did not obey my voice or walk according to it.

14Instead, they followed the stubbornness of their hearts and followed the Baals as their ancestors taught them.”

15Therefore, this is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: “I am about to feed this people wormwood and give them poisonous water to drink.

16I will scatter them among the nations that they and their ancestors have not known. I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”

17This is what the Lord of Armies says: Consider, and summon the women who mourn; send for the skillful women.

18Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us so that our eyes may overflow with tears, our eyelids be soaked with weeping.

19For a sound of lamentation is heard from Zion: How devastated we are. We are greatly ashamed, for we have abandoned the land; our dwellings have been torn down.

20Now hear the word of the Lord, you women. Pay attention to the words from his mouth. Teach your daughters a lament and one another a dirge,

21for Death has climbed through our windows; it has entered our fortresses, cutting off children from the streets, young men from the squares.

22“Speak as follows: ‘This is what the Lord declares: Human corpses will fall like manure on the surface of the field, like newly cut grain after the reaper with no one to gather it.