Jeremiah 16 — Septuagint (LXX)

The word of the LORD came to me:

You must not take a wife for yourself, and you must not have sons or daughters in this place.

For this is what the LORD says concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bear them and the fathers who sire them in this land:

They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them, and no one will bury them. They will become like dung on the surface of the ground. They will be consumed by sword and by famine, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the sky and the animals of the earth.

For this is what the LORD says: Do not enter a house of mourning. Do not go to grieve, and do not show sympathy for them, for I have withdrawn my peace from this people, declares the LORD — my faithful love and my compassion.

Both great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried, and no one will mourn for them. No one will gash themselves or shave their heads for them.

No one will break bread for them in mourning to comfort them for the dead, and no one will give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother.

You must not enter a house of feasting to sit with them, eating and drinking.

For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am about to silence in this place — before your very eyes and in your own days — the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the sound of the bridegroom and the sound of the bride.

When you report all these words to this people and they ask you, 'Why has the LORD pronounced all this great disaster against us? What is our iniquity? What is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?' —

then say to them: Because your ancestors abandoned me, declares the LORD, and went after other gods and served them and bowed down to them — they abandoned me and did not keep my instruction —

And you — you have done worse than your ancestors! Each of you walks after the stubbornness of his evil heart, refusing to listen to me.

So I will hurl you from this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

Therefore — days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no longer be said, 'As the LORD lives, who brought the children of Israel up from the land of Egypt,'

but rather, 'As the LORD lives, who brought the children of Israel up from the land of the north and from all the lands where he had driven them.' For I will bring them back to their own soil that I gave to their ancestors.

I am about to send for many fishermen, declares the LORD, and they will catch them. After that, I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down from every mountain and every hill and from the crevices of the rocks.

For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from my presence, and their iniquity is not concealed from my sight.

But first I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have profaned my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and they have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of distress — to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, 'Our ancestors inherited nothing but falsehood, worthless things in which there is no benefit.'

Can a human being make gods for himself? They are not gods at all!

Therefore — this time I will make them know. I will make them know my hand and my might, and they will know that my name is the LORD.