12. Then the Lord’s word came to Jeremiah:
13. The Lord, the God of Israel, proclaims: I made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
14. I said that every seventh year each of you must free any Hebrews who have been sold to you. After they have served you for six years, you must set them free. But your ancestors didn’t obey or pay any attention to me.
15. Recently you turned about and did what was right in my sight; each of you proclaimed liberty for the other and made a covenant before me in the temple that bears my name.
16. But then you went back on your word and made my name impure; each of you reclaimed the men and women you had set free and forced them to be your slaves again.
17. Therefore, the Lord proclaims: Since you have defied me by not setting your fellow citizens free, I’m setting you free, declares the Lord, free to die by the sword, disease, and famine! And I will make you an object of horror for all nations on earth.
18. I will make those who disregarded my covenant, violating its terms that they agreed to in my presence, like the calf they cut in two and then walked between the halves of its carcass.
19. The officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the eunuchs and priests, and all the people who passed through the pieces of the calf