1    2   The word of the Lord came to me: You shall not marry a wife; you shall have neither son nor daughter in this place. 3   For these are the words of the Lord concerning sons and daughters born in this place, the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them in this land: When men die, 4   struck down by deadly ulcers, there shall be no wailing for them and no burial; they shall be like dung lying upon the ground. When men perish by sword or famine, their corpses shall become food for birds and for beasts.

5   For these are the words of the Lord: Enter no house where there is a mourning-feast; do not go in to wail or to bring comfort, for I have

Confessions and addresses withdrawn my peace from this people, says the Lord, my love and affection. 6   High and low shall die in this land, but there shall be no burial, no wailing for them; no one shall gash himself, or shave his head. 7   No one shall give the mourner a portion of bread ^note to console him for the dead, nor give him ^note the cup of consolation, even for his father or mother. 8   Nor shall you enter a house where there is feasting, to sit eating and drinking there. 9   For these are the words of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: In your own days, in the sight of you all, and in this very place, I will silence all sounds of joy and gladness, and the voice of bridegroom and bride.

10   When you tell this people all these things they will ask you, ‘Why has the Lord decreed that this great disaster is to come upon us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?’ 11   You shall answer, Because your forefathers forsook me, says the Lord, and followed other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. 12   They forsook me and did not keep my law. And you yourselves have done worse than your forefathers; for each of you follows the promptings of his wicked and stubborn heart instead of obeying me. 13   So I will fling you headlong out of this land into a country unknown to you and to your forefathers; there you can serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favour. 14   Therefore, says the Lord, the time is coming when men shall no longer swear, ‘By the life of the Lord who brought the Israelites up from Egypt’, 15   but, ‘By the life of the Lord who brought the Israelites back from a northern land and from all the lands to which he had dispersed them’; and I will bring them back to the soil which I gave to their forefathers.

16   I will send for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall fish for them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them out from every mountain and hill and from the crevices in the rocks. 17   For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my sight, nor is their wrongdoing concealed from me. 18   I will first make them pay in full ^note for the wrong they have done and the sin they have committed by defiling with the dead lumber of their idols the land which belongs to me, and by filling it with their abominations.

   19   O Lord, my strength and my stronghold,
    my refuge in time of trouble,
  to thee shall the nations come
    from the ends of the earth and say,
  Our forefathers inherited only a sham,
  an idol vain and useless.
20   Can man make gods for himself?

Confessions and addresses
    They would be no gods.
   21   Therefore I am teaching them,
  once for all will I teach them
    my power and my might,
  and they shall learn that my name is the Lord.

Previous section

Next section