A reading from the book of Jeremiah.

Then the Lord said to me,

Though Moses and Samuel stood before me,

yet my heart would not turn toward this people,

send them out of my sight and let them go.

And when they ask you, where shall we go?

You shall say to them, thus says the Lord, those who are for pestilence to pestilence,

and those who are for the sword to the sword, those who are for famine to famine, and those

who are for captivity to captivity.

I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord,

the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth

to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.

Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you?

Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?

You have rejected me, declares the Lord. You keep going backward.

So I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you. I am weary of relenting.

I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land. I have bereaved them. I have destroyed my people.

They did not turn from their ways. I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas.

I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday. I have made anguish and terror

fall upon them suddenly. She who bore seven

has grown feeble. She has fainted away. Her son went down while it was yet day. She has been

shamed and disgraced. And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies,

...