Letter of Jeremiah 16-18

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹⁶ For just as someone’s dish is useless when it is broken, ¹⁷ so are their gods when they have been set up in the temples. Their eyes are full of the dust raised by the feet of those who enter. And just as the gates are shut on every side against anyone who has offended a king, as though under sentence of death, so the priests make their temples secure with doors and locks and bars in order that they may not be plundered by robbers.^{(A) 18} They light more lamps for them than they light for themselves, though their gods^[a] can see none of them.^(B)