Jeremiah 44:16-18

Contemporary English Version

¹⁶ Jeremiah, what do we care if you speak in the Lord's name? We refuse to listen! ¹⁷ We have promised to worship the goddess Astarte, the Queen of Heaven,^[a] and that is exactly what we are going to do. We will burn incense and offer sacrifices of wine to her, just as we, our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders did when we lived in Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah. We had plenty of food back then. We were well off, and nothing bad ever happened to us. ¹⁸ But since the time we stopped burning incense and offering wine sacrifices to her, we have been dying from war and hunger.