1And the word of Yahweh came to me, saying:
2You shall not take yourself a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.
3For thus says Yahweh concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bear them and concerning their fathers who beget them in this land:
4They shall die of deadly diseases; they shall not be mourned, nor shall they be buried; they shall become dung on the face of the ground. By the sword and by the famine they shall be finished off, and their corpses shall become food for the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth.
5For thus says Yahweh: Do not enter the house of mourning, and do not go to lament, and do not console them; for I have withdrawn my peace from this people, declares Yahweh — the loyal love and the compassions.
6And great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, nor shall anyone lament for them, nor gash himself, nor make himself bald for them.
7And no one shall break bread for them in mourning, to comfort him for the dead, nor shall they give them the cup of consolation to drink over one’s father or over one’s mother.
8And you shall not enter the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and to drink.
9For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am about to make cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
10And it shall be, when you declare to this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has Yahweh pronounced against us all this great disaster? What is our iniquity and what is our sin that we have committed against Yahweh our God?’ —
11then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers forsook me, declares Yahweh, and went after other gods and served them and bowed down to them, and forsook me and did not keep my law;
12and you have done worse than your fathers — for behold, each of you is walking after the stubbornness of his evil heart, refusing to listen to me.
13So I will hurl you out of this land into the land that you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’
14Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares Yahweh, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As Yahweh lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’
15but rather, ‘As Yahweh lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where he had driven them.’ And I will bring them back to their land that I gave to their fathers.
16Behold, I am sending for many fishermen, declares Yahweh, and they shall fish them out; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the clefts of the rocks.
17For my eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hidden from before me, nor is their iniquity concealed from before my eyes.
18And I will repay first double their iniquity and their sin, because they profaned my land with the carcasses of their detestable things, and filled my inheritance with their abominations.
19Yahweh, my strength and my stronghold and my refuge in the day of trouble — to you the nations shall come from the ends of the earth and say, ‘Our fathers inherited nothing but falsehood, futility, and there is no profit in them.’
20Can a man make gods for himself? Yet they are no gods!
21Therefore, behold, I am about to make them know — this time I will make them know my hand and my might — and they shall know that my name is Yahweh.
Open in the interactive reader →