Jeremiah
16
- Then the word of the LORD came to me:
- "You must not marry and have sons or
daughters in this place."
- For this is what the LORD says about the
sons and daughters born in this land and about the women who are their mothers
and the men who are their fathers:
- "They will die of deadly diseases.
They will not be mourned or buried but will be like refuse lying on the ground.
They will perish by sword and famine, and their dead bodies will become food
for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth."
- For this is what the LORD says: "Do
not enter a house where there is a funeral meal; do not go to mourn or show
sympathy, because I have withdrawn my blessing, my love and my pity from this
people," declares the LORD.
- "Both high and low will die in this
land. They will not be buried or mourned, and no one will cut himself or shave
his head for them.
- No one will offer food to comfort those
who mourn for the dead -- not even for a father or a mother -- nor will anyone
give them a drink to console them.
- "And do not enter a house where there
is feasting and sit down to eat and drink.
- For this is what the LORD Almighty, the
God of Israel, says: Before your eyes and in your days I will bring an end
to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom
in this place.
- "When you tell these people all this
and they ask you, 'Why has the LORD decreed such a great disaster against
us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the LORD our
God ?'
- then say to them, 'It is because your fathers
forsook me,' declares the LORD, 'and followed other gods and served and worshiped
them. They forsook me and did not keep my law.
- But you have behaved more wickedly than
your fathers. See how each of you is following the stubbornness of his evil
heart instead of obeying me.
- So I will throw you out of this land into
a land neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will serve other
gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.'
- "However, the days are coming,"
declares the LORD, "when men will no longer say, 'As surely as the LORD
lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,'
- but they will say, 'As surely as the LORD
lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out
of all the countries where he had banished them.' For I will restore them
to the land I gave their forefathers.
- "But now I will send for many fishermen,"
declares the LORD, "and they will catch them. After that I will send
for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill
and from the crevices of the rocks.
- My eyes are on all their ways; they are
not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.
- I will repay them double for their wickedness
and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the lifeless forms of
their vile images and have filled my inheritance with their detestable idols."
- O LORD, my strength and my fortress, my
refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of
the earth and say, "Our fathers possessed nothing but false gods, worthless
idols that did them no good.
- Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they
are not gods !"
- "Therefore I will teach them--this
time I will teach them my power and might. Then they will know that my name
is the LORD.
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