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word of the Lord came to me: 2 “You must not marry or have sons or daughters in this place.” 3 For this is what the Lord says concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bear them and the fathers who father them in this land: 4 “They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned nor will they be buried, but they will be like refuse lying on the ground. They will perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and for the wild animals of the earth.”
5 For this is what the Lord says: “Do not enter a house where there is a mourning feast taking place. Do not go in to lament or show sympathy for them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” declares the Lord, “and My faithful love and compassion. 6 Both great and small alike will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned, and no one will lament for them or cut himself or shave his head. 7 No one will break bread in mourning to offer him comfort for the dead. A cup of consolation will not be given to him to drink for the loss of his father or mother. 8 Also you must not go into a house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.”
9 For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “I am going to banish from this place in your days and before your eyes the sound of joy and gladness, and the voice of bridegroom and bride.
10 “When you tell the people all these things, they will say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced this great disaster against us? What is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 Then you are to say to them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me’, declares the Lord; ‘they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshipped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law. 12 But you have behaved even more wickedly than your fathers. Indeed, see how each of you is following the stubbornness of his own evil heart and not obeying Me. 13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known. There you will serve other gods day and night, and I will show you no favour’.
14 “Be assured, however, that the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when it will no longer be said: ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel out from the land of Egypt’, 15 but rather: ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the other lands where He had banished them’. For I will bring them back to their own land, which I gave their forefathers.
16 “Behold, I send for many fishermen,” declares the Lord, “and they will fish for them. After this I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes in the rocks. 17 For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes. 18 I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sins, because they have defiled My land. They have defiled My inheritance with the lifeless forms of their detestable and abominable idols.”
19 O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
my refuge in the day of trouble,
to You the nations will come
from the ends of the earth, and they will say,
“Surely our fathers have inherited only lies,
worthless idols in which there was no profit.
20 Can a man make gods for himself?
Yet they are not gods!”
21 “Therefore, I am about to teach them,
and this time I will make them know
My power and My might;
then they will learn
that My name is the Lord.”