Jeremiah 16

The word of the LORD also came to me. He said:

1The word of the LORD came also unto me, saying,

2You must not marry, and you must not have sons or daughters in this place.

2Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place.

NoteIn ancient Israel virtually every adult married and had children; a man without them had no one to carry his name or bury him. Jeremiah's enforced singleness was itself a public sign, prophets were regularly told to act out their message so people would ask what it meant.

3This is what the LORD says about the sons and daughters born in this place, about the mothers who gave birth to them, and about the fathers who fathered them in this land:

3For thus saith the LORD concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this land;

4They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them, and no one will bury them. Their bodies will lie on the ground like manure. War and hunger will finish them off, and their dead bodies will be food for the birds and the wild animals.

4They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.

NoteProper burial in the family tomb, and formal mourning by relatives, were owed to everyone who died. To lie unburied and be eaten by scavenging birds and animals was the most shameful end imaginable, and appears as a standard curse in ancient treaties and warnings.

5This is what the LORD says: Do not go into a house where people are mourning a death. Do not go there to grieve or to show sympathy. I have taken my peace away from these people, and my faithful love and my mercy too, says the LORD.

5For thus saith the LORD, Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the LORD, even lovingkindness and mercies.

NoteThe Hebrew names a specific kind of house: one holding a funeral gathering, where neighbors and relatives ate and drank with the bereaved family. "Faithful love" translates Hebrew *hesed*, the loyal, committed kindness owed within a family or a binding agreement, not a passing feeling.

6Important people and ordinary people alike will die in this land. No one will bury them or mourn for them. No one will cut himself or shave his head bald for them.

6Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them:

NoteGashing the skin and shaving the head or beard were widespread mourning customs in the region, ways of making grief visible on the body. Other parts of Israel's law forbade the practices, but they clearly went on.

7No one will break bread for the mourners to comfort them over the dead. No one will hand a mourner the cup of comfort when his father or his mother dies.

7Neither shall men tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother.

NoteThe Hebrew of the first line is uncertain. The traditional text reads something like "break for them," which many take as breaking bread, the meal neighbors brought to a grieving household; older English versions understood it as tearing or gashing oneself in grief. The "cup of comfort" was the drink handed to mourners at that meal.

8You must not go into a house where there is a feast, to sit down with them and eat and drink.

8Thou shalt not also go into the house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and to drink.

9This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: In this place, while you watch and in your own lifetime, I am going to put an end to the sound of laughing and the sound of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

9For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place in 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.

Note"LORD of Hosts" is a title meaning roughly "the LORD of armies," picturing God at the head of vast forces. The voices of bridegroom and bride stand for weddings, the loudest, most public sign that ordinary life is still going on.

10When you tell these people all these words, they will ask you, "Why has the LORD announced all this terrible trouble against us? What have we done wrong? What sin have we committed against the LORD our God?"

10And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?

11Then you are to tell them: It is because your ancestors abandoned me, says the LORD. They followed other gods, served them, and worshiped them. They abandoned me and did not keep my law.

11Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the LORD, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;

12And you have done worse than your ancestors did. Look at you: each of you follows the stubborn urges of his own evil heart instead of listening to me.

12And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me:

13So I will throw you out of this land into a land you do not know, a land your ancestors did not know either. There you will serve other gods day and night, and I will show you no kindness.

13Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; where I will not shew you favour.

NoteGods were commonly thought of as belonging to particular lands and peoples. To be deported was to live surrounded by another nation's worship with no say in the matter, serving other gods "day and night" describes the situation as much as the choice.

14But look, the days are coming, says the LORD, when people will no longer swear, "As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the people of Israel up out of Egypt."

14Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;

Note"As surely as the LORD lives" was the standard opening of a solemn oath, like swearing on something unbreakable. Israelites habitually completed it by naming the rescue from Egypt, the event that had defined them as a people.

15Instead they will swear, "As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them." For I will bring them back to their own land, the land I gave to their ancestors.

15But, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.

NoteBabylon lay to the east, but its armies reached Israel by the northern road around the desert, so invasion and exile are regularly spoken of as coming from the north.

16Look, I am sending for many fishermen, says the LORD, and they will fish for these people. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down from every mountain and every hill and out of the cracks in the rocks.

16Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.

NoteFishermen sweeping a lake with nets and hunters flushing game out of its hiding places are images of a search nobody escapes. Whether these figures are the ones who drag people off into exile or the ones who track them down to bring them home is left open here.

17For my eyes are on everything they do. Their ways are not hidden from my face, and their guilt is not hidden from my eyes.

17For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.

18First I will pay them back double for their guilt and their sin, because they have made my land unclean. They have filled the land that belongs to me with the lifeless shapes of their disgusting, detestable idols.

18And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled my land, they have filled mine inheritance with the carcases of their detestable and abominable things.

NoteThe word translated "double" can mean twice as much, or a matching full measure, an amount equal to what was done; interpreters divide over which is meant. The word for the idols is related to the word for corpses: Jeremiah calls them dead bodies, so that they pollute the land the way an unburied corpse made a person ritually unclean.

19LORD, you are my strength and my fortress, my safe place in the day of trouble. The nations will come to you from the ends of the earth and will say, "Our ancestors inherited nothing but lies, worthless idols that do no good at all."

19O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.

Note"The nations" (KJV "Gentiles") means all the peoples who are not Israel, the outsiders, whose own inherited gods are what the speech goes on to dismiss.

20Can a person make gods for himself? They are not gods at all.

20Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?

21So look, this time I will teach them. I will make them know my hand and my power, and they will know that my name is the LORD.

21Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is The LORD.

NoteLORD printed in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, written with four Hebrew letters (YHWH), which Jews later avoided pronouncing aloud. To "know the name" is to know the one who bears it, recognized by what he does.