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

you 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 noon day. 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, declares the Lord.

Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land.

I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.

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