Jeremiah 16

A life set apart as a sign

1The LORD’s word came to me:

2“Do not take a wife or have sons and daughters in this place.

3For this is what the LORD says about the sons and daughters born here, the mothers who bear them, and the fathers who father them in this land:

4They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried; they will lie like dung on the ground. Sword and famine will consume them, and their corpses will be food for the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth.

5“For this is what the LORD says: Do not enter a house of mourning. Do not go to lament or show sympathy for them, for I have withdrawn my peace from this people,” declares the LORD, “my steadfast love and compassion.

6Great and small alike will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned. No one will cut themselves or shave their head for them.

7No one will break bread for a mourner to offer comfort over the dead. No one will offer the cup of consolation over the loss of a father or mother.

8Do not enter a house of feasting to sit with them and eat and drink.

9For this is what the LORD of hosts, Israel’s God, says: Before your eyes, in your own days, I will silence in this place the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bridegroom and bride.

10“When you tell this people all these things, they will ask you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced this great disaster against us? What is our guilt? What sin have we committed against the LORD our God?’

11Tell them: ‘Because your ancestors abandoned me,’ declares the LORD. ‘They followed other gods, served them, and bowed down to them. They abandoned me and did not keep my instruction.

12And you have done worse than your ancestors! Each of you follows the stubbornness of an evil heart instead of listening to me.

13So I will hurl you from this land into a land neither you nor your ancestors knew. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

Return and reckoning

14“Yet look, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when people will no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up from Egypt,’

15but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up from the northern land and from all the lands where he had driven them.’ I will bring them back to the soil I gave their ancestors.

16“Look, I am sending for many fishers,” declares the LORD, “and they will fish for them. Afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and hill and from the crevices in the rocks.

17My eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, and their guilt is not concealed from my eyes.

18First I will repay their guilt and sin double, because they have defiled my land with the corpses of their detestable things and filled my inheritance with their abominations.”

19LORD, my strength and stronghold,
my refuge in the day of trouble,
to you nations will come from the ends of the earth
and say, ‘Our ancestors inherited nothing but lies,
empty things with no use in them.’

20Can people make gods for themselves?
Such things are not gods!

21“So look, this time I will make them know;
I will make them know my hand and my might.
Then they will know that my name is the LORD.”