Jeremiah 16

Thomson^{(i) 1} But thou must not take a wife, saith the Lord God of Israel; ² nor shall a son or a daughter be born to thee in this place. ³ For thus saith the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers who begot them in this land; ⁴ by a direful death they shall die; they shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall be for a spectacle on the face of the earth; they shall be for the wild beasts of the earth, and the birds of the air. By the sword they shall fall, and by famine they shall be consumed. ⁵ Thus saith the Lord: Join not in their funeral entertainments; go not to make lamentation nor bewail them. ⁶ Since I have taken away My peace from this people, no lamentation shall be made for them; nor shall any cut themselves nor be shaved. ⁷ There shall neither be bread broken in their mourning, to comfort them for the dead; nor shall a cup of consolation be given to any one for his father or mother. ⁸ Into a house of feasting thou shalt not enter, to sit with them to eat and to drink: ⁹ for thus saith the Lord the God of Israel: Behold I am about to remove out of this place, before your eyes and in these your days, the sound of joy and the sound of mirth, the voice of the bride groom and the voice of the bride. ¹⁰ Now when thou hast proclaimed to this people all these words and they say to thee, Why hath the Lord denounced against us all these evils? What is our iniquity? And what is our sin which we have committed against the Lord our God? ¹¹ Then thou shalt say to them, Because your fathers have forsaken Me, saith the Lord, and have run after strange gods and served them and worshipped them, and have forsaken Me and have not kept My law; ¹² and you have done evil worse than your fathers; and lo! you walk every one after the desires of your wicked heart, that you may not hearken to Me: ¹³ therefore I will hurl you out of this land, into a land which neither your nor your fathers knew; and you shall there serve strange gods which will shew you no mercy. ¹⁴ Therefore behold the days are coming, saith the Lord, when they shall no more say, 'As the Lord liveth Who brought up the Israelites out of the land of Egypt': ¹⁵ but, 'as the Lord liveth, Who brought up the house of Israel from the north, and from all the countries to which they were driven'; for I will bring them again to their land which I gave to their fathers. ¹⁶ Behold I will send many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them: and after that I will send many hunters and they shall hunt them, on every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. ¹⁷ Because Mine eyes are on all their ways, and their iniquities are not hid from Mine eyes, ¹⁸ therefore I will doubly requite them for their wickedness and their sins-for their having defiled My land with the carcasses of their abominations, and for their acts of iniquity with which they have caused My heritage to transgress. ¹⁹ [p] O Lord, Thou art my strength and my help, and my refuge in days of affliction. To Thee nations will come from the extremity of the earth and say, What lying idols did our fathers possess! there is no advantage in them. ²⁰ If a man make gods for himself, they are indeed no gods. ²¹ [J] For this purpose, behold! I will at that time manifest My hand to them and make known to them My power, and they shall know that My name is The Lord.