Bohairic Coptic Old Testament

Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have defiled my portion, they have made my desirable portion a trackless wilderness;

even this great pride of the men that will not hearken to my words, and have gone after strange gods, to serve them, and to worship them: and they shall be as this girdle, which can be used for nothing.

Thus saith the Lord to this people, They have loved to wander, and they have not spared, therefore God has not prospered them; now will he remember their iniquity.

Woe is me, my mother! thou hast born me as some man of strife, and at variance with the whole earth; I have not helped others, nor has any one helped me; my strength has failed among them that curse me.

And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt report to this people all these words, and they shall say to thee, Wherefore has the Lord pronounced against us all these evils? what is our unrighteousness? and what is our sin which we have sinned before the Lord our God?

I the Lord try the hearts, and prove the reins, to give to every one according to his ways, and according to the fruits of his devices.

and they do evil before me, so as not to hearken to my voice, then will I repent of the good which I spoke of, to do it to them.

And thou shalt break the bottle in the sight of the men that go forth with thee,

For I have heard the reproach of many gathering round, saying, Conspire ye, and let us conspire together against him, even all his friends: watch his intentions, if perhaps he shall be deceived, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall be avenged on him.

For I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good: it shall be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall consume it with fire.

Weep not for the dead, nor lament for him: weep bitterly for him that goes away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native land.

For because of these things the land mourns; the pastures of the wilderness are dried up; and their course is become evil, and so also their strength.

And I will send against them famine, and pestilence, and the sword, until they are consumed from off the land which I gave them.

And I will destroy from among them the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the scent of ointment, and the light of a candle.

And that day shall be to the Lord our God a day of vengeance, to take vengeance on his enemies: and the sword of the Lord shall devour, and be glutted, and be drunken with their blood: for the Lord has a sacrifice from the land of the north at the river Euphrates.

And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shall be satisfied.

The Lord has brought forth his judgment: come, and let us declare in Sion the works of the Lord our God.

For I have stripped Esau, I have uncovered their secret places; they shall have no power to hide themselves, they have perished each by the hand of his brother, my neighbour, and it is impossible

Cursed is the man that does the works of the Lord carelessly, keeping back his sword from blood.

And the princes of Juda heard this word, and they went up out of the house of the king to the house of the Lord, and sat in the entrance of the new gate.

for they prophesy lies to you, to remove you far from your land.

Then Ananias took the yokes from the neck of Jeremias in the sight of all the people, and broke them to pieces.

For thus said the Lord; When seventy years shall be on the point of being accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you, and will confirm my words to you, to bring back your people to this place.

Hear the words of the Lord, ye nations, and proclaim them to the islands afar off; say, He that scattered Israel will also gather him, and keep him as one that feeds his flock.

And I wrote it in a book, and sealed it, and took the testimony of witnesses, and weighed the money in the balance.

Thus saith the Lord; There shall yet be heard in this place, of which ye say, it is destitute of men and cattle, in the cities of Juda, and in the streets of Jerusalem, the places that have been made desolate for want of men and cattle,

Then all the nobles, and all the people who had entered into the covenant, engaging to set free every one his man-servant, and every one his maid, turned,

but we have dwelt in tents, and have hearkened, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us.

And Baruch read in the book the words of Jeremias in the house of the Lord, in the house of Gamarias son of Saphan the scribe, in the upper court, in the entrance of the new gate of the house of the Lord, and in the ears of all the people.

And though ye should smite the whole host of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there should be left a few wounded men, these should rise up each in his place, and burn this city with fire.

And the king commanded Abdemelech, saying, Take with thee hence thirty men, and bring him up out of the dungeon, that he die not.

And, behold, I dwell in your presence at Massepha, to stand before the Chaldeans who shall come against you: and do ye gather grapes, and fruits, and oil, and put them into your vessels, and dwell in the cities which ye have obtained possession of.

And Ismael brought back all the people that were left in Massepha, and the king's daughter, whom the captain of the guard had committed in charge to Godolias the son of Achicam: and he went away beyond the children of Ammon.

If ye will indeed dwell in this land, I will build you, and will not pull you down, but will plant you, and in no wise pluck you up: for I have ceased from the calamities which I brought upon you.

and thou shalt say, Thus has the Lord said; Behold, I will send, and will bring Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and he shall place his throne upon these stones which thou hast hidden, and he shall lift up weapons against them.

And have not ceased even to this day, and they have not kept to my ordinances, which I set before their fathers.

And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Sedekias before his eyes; and he slew all the princes of Juda in Deblatha.

TETH. Her uncleanness is before her feet; she remembered not her last end; she has lowered her boasting tone, there is none to comfort her. Behold, O Lord, my affliction: for the enemy has magnified himself.

JOD. The elders of the daughter of Sion have sat upon the ground, they have kept silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloths: they have brought down to the ground the chief virgins in Jerusalem.

he has troubled me, as a she-bear lying in wait: he is to me as a lion in secret places.

JOD. The hands of tender-hearted women have sodden their own children: they became meat for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

We shall bring in our bread with danger of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

And the likeness of their faces was the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right of the four; and the face of a calf on the left of the four; and the face of an eagle to the four.

And he unrolled it before me: and in it the front and the back were written upon: and there was written in it Lamentation, and mournful song, and woe.

And he said to me, Son of man, receive into thine heart all the words that I have spoken to thee, and hear them with thine ears.

And thou shalt eat thy food by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat them.

Therefore the fathers shall eat their children in the midst of thee, and children shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and I will scatter all that are left of thee to every wind.

And they shall know that I the Lord have spoken.

Behold, the day of the Lord! although the rod has blossomed,

So I went in and looked; and beheld vain abominations, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon them round about.

Therefore mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have any mercy: I have recompensed their ways upon their heads.

And as for their appearance, there was one likeness to the four, as if there should be a wheel in the midst of a wheel.

Ye shall fall by the sword; I will judge you on the mountains of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.

Say to them, Thus saith the Lord God, the Prince and the Ruler in Israel, even to all the house of Israel who are in the midst of them:

Because they have caused my people to err, saying, Peace; and there is no peace; and one builds a wall, and they plaster it, it shall fall.

And they shall bear their iniquity according to the trespass of him that asks; and it shall be in like manner to the prophet according to the trespass:

And I clothed thee with embroidered garments, and clothed thee beneath with purple, and girded thee with fine linen, and clothed thee with silk,

that thou mayest slay victims; be sharpened that thou mayest be bright, ready for slaughter, slay, set at nought, despise every tree.

And, behold, it thrives: shall it prosper? shall it not wither as soon as the east wind touches it? it shall be withered together with the growth of its shoots.

And if he beget a mischievous son, shedding blood and committing sins,

Thy mother was as a vine and as a blossom on a pomegranate tree, planted by water: her fruit and her shoot abounded by reason of much water.

And I brought them into the wilderness.

In thee they have uncovered the father's shame; and in thee they have humbled her that was set apart for uncleanness.

They uncovered her shame: they took her sons and daughters, and slew her with the sword: and she became a byword among women: and they wrought vengeance in her for the sake of the daughters.

and I will multiply the wood, and kindle the fire, that the flesh may be consumed, and the liquor boiled away;

I have given him the children of Kedem in addition to the children of Ammon for an inheritance, that there may be no remembrance of the children of Ammon.

By reason of thy multitude of his horses their dust shall cover thee, and by reason of the sound of his horsemen and the wheels of his chariots the walls shall be shaken, when he enters into thy gates, as one entering into a city from the plain.

Persians and Lydians and Libyans were in thine army: thy warriors hung in thee shields and helmets; these gave thee thy glory.

Thou shalt perish by the hands of strangers among the multitude of the uncircumcised: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord.

Therefore, behold, I am against thee, and against all thy rivers, and I will give up the land of Egypt to desolation, and the sword, and destruction, from Magdol and Syene even to the borders of the Ethiopians.

Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the multitude of the Egyptians by the hand of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon,

Therefore thus saith the Lord; Because thou art grown great, and hast set thy top in the midst of the clouds, and I saw when he was exalted;

And many nations shall mourn over thee, and their kings shall be utterly amazed, when my sword flies in their faces, as they wait for their own fall from the day of thy fall.

And thou, son of man, say to the house of Israel; Thus have ye spoken, saying, Our errors, and our iniquities weigh upon us, and we pine away in them, and how then shall we live?

thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hands, and will turn them back that they shall not feed my sheep, and the shepherds shall no longer feed them; and I will deliver my sheep out of their mouth, and they shall no longer be meat for them.

and I will multiply men upon you, even all the house of Israel to the end: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the desolate land shall be built upon.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath entered into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, a very great congregation.

Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass in that day, that thoughts shall come up into thine heart, and thou shalt devise evil devices.

and they shall not take any wood out of the field, neither shall they cut any out of the forests, but they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall plunder those that plundered them, and spoil those that spoiled them, saith the Lord.

and the chambers of the gate of the chamber in front were three on one side and three on the other, and there was one measure to the three: there was one measure to the porches on this side and on that.

and between the chambers, were a width of twenty cubits, the circumference of the house.

by the opening of the walk at the corner; and the south parts were toward the south, toward the remaining space, and toward the partition, and so were the chambers.

And thou, son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may cease from their sins; and shew its aspect and the arrangement of it.

But as for the Levites who departed far from me when Israel went astray from me after their imaginations, they shall even bear their iniquity.

Ye shall have a just balance, and a just measure, and a just choenix for measure.

And the prince shall enter with them in the midst of them when they go in; and when they go forth, he shall go forth.

And fishers shall stand there from Ingadin to Enagallim; it shall be a place to spread out nets upon; it shall be distinct; and the fishes thereof shall be as the fishes of the great sea, a very great multitude.

Out of this shall be the first-fruits of the holy things to the priests, northward, five and twenty-thousand, and towards the west, ten thousand, and southward, five and twenty thousand: and the mountain of the sanctuary, shall be in the midst of it,

Many must be tested, and thoroughly whitened, and tried with fire, and sanctified; but the transgressors shall transgress: and none of the transgressors shall understand; but the wise shall understand.

Yet the number of the children of Israel was as the sand of the sea, which shall not be measured nor numbered: and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said to them, Ye are not my people, even they shall be called the sons of the living God.