Bible Time

¹THE word of Yahvah came to me, saying, ²You will not take a wife for yourself, nor will you have sons or daughters in this place. ³For thus says Yahvah concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and their fathers who begat them in this land; ⁴They will die the death of those who are ravaged by famine; they will not be lamented, nor will they be buried; but they will be as refuse on the face of the earth; and they will be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses will be food for the birds of the air and for the animals of the earth. ⁵For thus says Yahvah, Do not enter into the house of mourning, nor go to lament nor bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from the people, says Yahvah, even lovingkindness and mercies. ⁶Both the great and the small will die in this land; they will not be buried, nor will anyone mourn for them or lament for them, or shave his head for them; ⁷Men will not tear themselves for them in mourning to comfort them for the dead; nor will men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their fathers or for their mothers. ⁸You will not go into the house of feasting to sit with them to eat and to drink. ⁹For thus says Yahvah of hosts, the God of Israel: Look, I will cause to cease out of this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

¹⁰It will come to pass, when you tell this people all these words, and they will say to you, Why has Yahvah pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is our sin that we have sinned against Yahvah our God? ¹¹That you will say to them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, says Yahvah, and have walked after other gods and have served them and have worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, ¹²And you have done worse than your fathers; for look, everyone walks away after the imagination of his evil heart, that you may not listen to me; ¹³Therefore, I will cast you out of this land into a land which you do not know, neither you nor your fathers; there you will serve other gods day and night; and I will have no compassion on you.

¹⁴Now, look, the days are coming, says Yahvah, when it will not be said any longer, Yahvah lives who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; ¹⁵But, Yahvah lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where I had driven them; and I will bring them again into their land which I gave to their fathers. ¹⁶Look, I will send for many fishers, says Yahvah, and they will fish them from islands; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks. ¹⁷For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my face, nor is their iniquity hidden from my eyes. ¹⁸And first I will doubly repay them for their iniquities and their sins; because they have defiled my land with burnt offerings of their idols and have filled my inheritance with their abominations. ¹⁹Oh Yahvah, my strength and my helper and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles will come to you from the ends of the earth, and will say, Surely the idols of falsehood which our fathers have inherited are nothing, and there is no profit in them. ²⁰Look, men make gods to themselves, and they are no gods. ²¹Therefore, look, I will show them, and at this time I will make known to them my hand and my might; and they will know that my name is Yahvah.