Jeremy 16

¹And the word of our Lord was made to me, saying:

²Thou shalt not take a wife, and thou shalt not have sons and daughters in this place.

³Because thus saith our Lord concerning sons and daughters, that are begotten in this place, and concerning their mothers, which bear them: and concerning their fathers, of whose stock they were born in this land:

⁴by the deaths of diseases they shall die: they shall not be mourned, and they shall not be buried, they shall be as a dunghill upon the face of the earth: they shall be consumed, both with sword, & famine: & their carcass shall be meat for the fowls of the air, and beasts of the earth.

⁵For thus saith our Lord: Enter not into the house of feasting, neither go thou to mourn, nor comfort them: because I have taken away my peace from this people, saith our Lord, mercy and commiserations.

⁶And great and little shall die in this land: they shall not be buried nor mourned, and they shall not cut themselves, neither shall baldness be made for them.

⁷And they shall not break bread among them to him that mourneth to comfort him upon the dead: and they shall not give them drink of the cup to comfort them upon their father and mother.

⁸And enter not into the house of feasting, to sit with them, and to eat and drink:

⁹because thus saith our Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Behold I will take away out of this place in your eyes, & in your days the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰And when thou shalt tell this people all these words, and they shall say to thee: Wherefore hath our Lord spoken upon us all this great evil? What is our iniquity? And what is our sin, that we have sinned to the Lord our God?

¹¹Thou shalt say to them: Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith our Lord: and gone after strange gods, and served them, and adored them: and me they have forsaken, & my law they have not kept.

¹²But you also have wrought worse than your fathers: for behold every one walketh after the perversity of his evil heart, that he hear me not.

¹³And I will cast you forth out of this land, into a land which you & your fathers knew not: & there you shall serve strange gods day & night, which shall not give you any rest.

¹⁴Therefore behold the days come, saith our Lord, and it shall be said no more: The Lord liveth, that brought forth the children of Israel out of the Land of Ægypt.

¹⁵But, The Lord liveth, that brought the children of Israel out of the land of the North, and out of all the lands to the which I did cast them out: and I will bring them again into their land, which I gave to their fathers.

¹⁶Behold I will send many fishers saith our Lord, and they shall fish them: and after this I will send them many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every little hill, and out of the caves of rocks.

¹⁷Because mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, and their iniquity hath not been hid from mine eyes.

¹⁸And I will repay first their double iniquities, and their sins: because they have contaminated my land with the carcasses of their idols, and with their abominations they have filled mine inheritance.

¹⁹O Lord my force, and my strength, and my refuge in the day of tribulation: to thee the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth, and shall say: In very deed our fathers have possessed lying, vanity which hath not profited them.

²⁰Why, shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are not gods?

²¹Therefore behold I will shew them at this time, I will shew them my hand, and my power: and they shall know that my name is the Lord.