You’ve Made a Total Mess of Your Life

20-23 “People of Jerusalem, climb a Lebanon peak and weep,
    climb a Bashan mountain and wail,
Climb the Abarim ridge and cry—
    you’ve made a total mess of your life.
I spoke to you when everything was going your way.
    You said, ‘I’m not interested.’
You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you,
    never listened to a thing I said.
All your leaders will be blown away,
    all your friends end up in exile,
And you’ll find yourself in the gutter,
    disgraced by your evil life.
You big-city people thought you were so important,
    thought you were ‘king of the mountain’!
You’re soon going to be doubled up in pain,
    pain worse than the pangs of childbirth.

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21 I warned you when you felt secure,(A)
    but you said, ‘I will not listen!’
This has been your way from your youth;(B)
    you have not obeyed(C) me.
22 The wind(D) will drive all your shepherds(E) away,
    and your allies(F) will go into exile.
Then you will be ashamed and disgraced(G)
    because of all your wickedness.
23 You who live in ‘Lebanon,[a](H)
    who are nestled in cedar buildings,
how you will groan when pangs come upon you,
    pain(I) like that of a woman in labor!

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Footnotes

  1. Jeremiah 22:23 That is, the palace in Jerusalem (see 1 Kings 7:2)

21 I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. This hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not my voice.

22 The wind shall eat up all thy pastors, and thy lovers shall go into captivity: surely then shalt thou be ashamed and confounded for all thy wickedness.

23 O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!

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