July 28, 2012, Reading

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah   7: 1-11

7:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying:
7:2 “Stand at the gate to the house of the Lord, and preach this word there, and say: Listen to the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter through these gates to adore the Lord.
7:3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Make your ways and your intentions good, and I will live with you in this place.
7:4 Do not choose to trust in lying words, saying: ‘This is the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!’
7:5 For if you direct your ways and your intentions well, if you exercise judgment between a man and his neighbor,
7:6 if you do not act with deceit toward the new arrival, the orphan, and the widow, and if you do not pour out innocent blood in this place, and if you do not walk after strange gods, which is to your own harm,
7:7 then I will live with you in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers from the beginning and even forever.
7:8 Behold, you trust in false words, which will not benefit you,
7:9 so as to steal, to murder, to commit adultery, to swear falsely, to offer libations to Baal, and to go after strange gods, which you do not know.
7:10 And you arrived and stood before me in this house, where my name is invoked, and you said: ‘We have been freed because we carried out all these abominations.’
7:11 So then, has this house, where my name has been invoked, become a den of robbers in your eyes? It is I, I am, I have seen, says the Lord.

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