1 The word of the LORD came to me, saying,
2 "Do not take a wife for yourself, and do not have sons or daughters in this place.
3 For thus says the LORD about the sons and daughters born in this place, and about the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them in this land:
4 They will die deaths of disease; they will not be mourned or buried; they will become dung on the surface of the ground. By sword and famine they will be finished off, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth.
5 "For thus says the LORD: Do not go into a house where there is a funeral meal; do not go to mourn or show them sympathy; for I have withdrawn my peace from this people," declares the LORD, "the steadfast love and the compassion.
6 Great and small will die in this land; they will not be buried, no one will mourn for them, and no one will gash himself or shave his head for them.
7 No one will break bread for them in mourning, to comfort anyone over the dead, and no one will give them the cup of consolation to drink for a father or a mother.
8 Nor are you to go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink.
9 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: See, I will silence in this place, before your eyes and in your days, the sound of rejoicing and the sound of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
10 "When you tell this people all these words and they ask you, 'Why has the LORD decreed against us all this great evil? What is our iniquity, and what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?'
11 then tell them, 'It is because your fathers abandoned me,' declares the LORD, 'and went after other gods, served them and bowed down to them, but me they abandoned and my law they did not keep;
12 and you have done worse than your fathers, for look, each of you is walking after the stubbornness of his evil heart, refusing to listen to me.
13 So I will throw you out of this land into a land you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, and there you will serve other gods day and night, because I will not grant you favor.'
14 "Therefore the days are coming," declares the LORD, "when it will no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives, who brought the children of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,'
15 but rather, 'As the LORD lives, who brought the children of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands to which he had driven them.' And I will bring them back to their land, which I gave to their fathers.
16 "See, I am sending for many fishermen," declares the LORD, "and they will fish them out; after that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and every hill and in the crevices of the rocks.
17 For my eyes are upon all their ways; they are not hidden from my face, and their iniquity is not concealed from before my eyes.
18 But first I will repay their iniquity and their sin double, because they have profaned my land with the corpses of their vile idols, and with their abominations they have filled my inheritance."
19 O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, "Nothing but lies did our fathers inherit, emptiness, and in them nothing of use.
20 Can a man make gods for himself? They are not gods!"
21 "So see, I will let them know; this once I will let them know my hand and my strength, and they will know that my name is the LORD."