Jeremiah 16

Jeremiah’s Life-Style and Message

16The word of the Lord also came to me, saying, ²“You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.” ³For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land: ⁴“They shall die ^agruesome deaths; they shall not be ^blamented nor shall they be ^cburied, but they shall be ^dlike refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their ^ecorpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.”

⁵For thus says the Lord: ^f“Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” says the Lord, “lovingkindness and mercies. ⁶Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; ^gneither shall men lament for them, ^hcut themselves, nor ⁱmake themselves bald for them. ⁷Nor shall men break bread in mourning for them, to comfort them for the dead; nor shall men give them the cup of consolation to ^jdrink for their father or their mother. ⁸Also you shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.”

⁹For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, ^kI will cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of ¹mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰“And it shall be, when you show this people all these words, and they say to you, ^l‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ ¹¹then you shall say to them, ^m‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the Lord; ‘they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. ¹²And you have done ⁿworse than your fathers, for behold, ^oeach one ²follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me. ^13pTherefore I will cast you out of this land ^qinto 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 show you favor.’

God Will Restore Israel

¹⁴“Therefore behold, the ^rdays are coming,” says the Lord, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ ¹⁵but, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the ^snorth and from all the lands where He had driven them.’ For ^tI will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers.

¹⁶“Behold, I will send for many ^ufishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. ¹⁷For My ^veyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes. ¹⁸And first I will repay ^wdouble for their iniquity and their sin, because ^xthey have defiled My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable and abominable idols.”

¹⁹O Lord, ^ymy strength and my fortress,

^zMy refuge in the day of affliction,

The Gentiles shall come to You

From the ends of the earth and say,

“Surely our fathers have inherited lies,

Worthlessness and ^aunprofitable things.”

²⁰Will a man make gods for himself,

^bWhich are not gods?

²¹“Therefore behold, I will this once cause them to know,

I will cause them to know

My hand and My might;

And they shall know that ^cMy name is the Lord.