Judgement on Judah
1THE word of the LORD came to me:
2You are not to marry or to have sons and daughters in this place.
3For these are the words of the LORD about any sons and daughters born in this place, about the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them in this land:
4They shall die a horrible death; there must be no wailing for them and no burial; they will be dung spread over the ground. They will perish by sword or famine, and their corpses will be food for birds and beasts.
5For these are the words of the LORD: Do not enter a house where there is a funeral feast; do not go in to wail or to bring comfort, for, says the LORD, I have withdrawn my peace from this people, my love and compassion.
6High and low will die in this land, but there must be no burial, no wailing for them; no one is to gash himself or shave his head.
7No one is to offer the mourner a portion of bread to console him for the dead or give him a cup of consolation for the loss of his father or mother.
8Nor may you enter a house where there is feasting, to sit eating and drinking there.
9For these are the words of the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: In your own days and in the sight of you all, I shall silence in this place every sound of joy and gladness, the voices of bridegroom and bride.
10When you tell this people all these things they will ask you, “Why has the LORD decreed that this great disaster is to come on us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the LORD our God?”
11You are to answer: Because your forefathers forsook me, says the LORD, and followed other gods, serving and worshipping them. They forsook me and did not keep my law.
12And 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.
13So I shall fling you headlong out of this land into a country unknown to you and your forefathers; there serve other gods day and night, for I shall show you no favour.
14Therefore the time is coming, says the LORD, when people will no longer swear “by the life of the LORD who brought the Israelites up from Egypt”;
15instead they will swear “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 shall bring them back to the soil which I gave to their forefathers.
16I shall send for many fishermen, says the LORD, and they will fish for them. After that I shall send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and hill and from the crevices in the rocks.
17For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my sight, nor is their wrongdoing concealed from me.
18I shall first make them pay double for the wrong they have done and the sin they have committed by defiling the land which belongs to me; they have filled my possession with their lifeless idols and abominations.
19LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in time of trouble, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say: Our forefathers inherited only a sham, an idol vain and worthless.
20Can man make gods for himself? They would be no gods.
21Therefore I am teaching them, I shall teach them once for all my power and my might, and they will learn that my name is the LORD.