¹⁵ Then all the men who had knowledge that their wives were burning perfumes to other gods, and all the women who were present, a great meeting, answering Jeremiah, said,

²¹ Certainly the evil-doer will not go free from punishment, but the seed of the upright man will be safe.

⁵ Why will you have more and more punishment? why keep on in your evil ways? Every head is tired and every heart is feeble.

¹ Go quickly through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and get knowledge, and make a search in her wide places if there is a man, if there is one in her who is upright, who keeps faith; and she will have my forgiveness.

² And though they say, By the living Lord; truly their oaths are false.

³ O Lord, do not your eyes see good faith? you have given them punishment, but they were not troubled; you have sent destruction on them, but they did not take your teaching to heart: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they would not come back.

⁴ Then I said, But these are the poor: they are foolish, for they have no knowledge of the way of the Lord or of the behaviour desired by their God.

⁵ I will go to the great men and have talk with them; for they have knowledge of the way of the Lord and of the behaviour desired by their God. But as for these, their one purpose is a broken yoke and burst bands.

⁴ But before they had gone to bed, the men of the town, all the men of Sodom, came round the house, young and old, from every part of the town;

²⁶ Was it not in these things that Solomon, king of Israel, did wrong? among a number of nations there was no king like him, and he was dear to his God, and God made him king over all Israel: but even he was made to do evil by strange women.

¹³ Go in by the narrow door; for wide is the door and open is the way which goes to destruction, and great numbers go in by it.

¹ But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it.

² And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.