 1 The Word of the Lord was to me saying, 2 You shall not take a wife for yourself, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. 3 For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers who fathered them in this land: 4 They will die from deaths of diseases. They will not be mourned, nor will they be buried. But they will be like dung on the face of the earth. They will be destroyed by the sword and by famine. Their bodies will be food for the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth. 5 Thus says the Lord, Do not enter into the house of mourning. Do not go to weep or moan over them. For I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, even lovingkindness and mercies. 6 Both the great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried nor will anyone mourn for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them. 7 Nor will anyone tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead. Nor will anyone give them the cup of comfort to drink for their father or for their mother. 8 You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them to eat and to drink. 9 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I will cause the voice of mirth to cease out of this place before your eyes and in your days and the voice of gladness and the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. 10 When you declare to this people all these words and they say to you, Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? Or what is our iniquity or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God? 11 Then you shall say to them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the Lord, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshiped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law. 12 You have done worse than your fathers. For, behold, you walk each one after the stubbornness of his evil heart, without listening to me; 13 even I will cast you out of this land into a land that you do not know, neither you nor your fathers. And there you shall serve other gods day and night. Where I will not grant you favor. 14 Indeed+ the days are coming, says the Lord, that it will no longer be said, As the Lord lives, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; 15 but, As the Lord lives, who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands where He had driven them. And I will bring them again into their lands that I gave to their fathers. 16 Behold, I will send for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they will fish them. Afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. 17 For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hid from me nor is their iniquity hid from my eyes. 18 First I will twice repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled my land, they have filled my inheritance with the dead bodies of their abominable things. 19 O Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth and they will say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies and vanity and there is no profit in them. 20 Shall a man make gods to himself, and they are no gods? 21 Therefore, behold, I will make them know. This time I will cause them to know my hand and my might. They will know that my name is the Lord Jehovah.
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