I have taken away my peace from this people
1The Lord talked to me and He said:
2‘Do not marry and have children in this land,
3because I tell you that the children
who are born in this land,
and their parents in this land,
4will become very sick and die.
No one will cry and mourn or bury them.
They will lie on the ground like manure.
They will die in war or
because they do not have food to eat,
and the birds and wild animals
will eat their dead bodies.’
5The Lord also said: ‘Jeremiah, do not go into a house where people eat together to mourn. Do not mourn with them and show you feel sorry, because I will not make good things happen to this nation. I no longer love them or feel sorry for them. 6All the people in this land will die, the important and the poor people. No one will bury them or mourn them. No person will cut himself or shave his hair to show that he is sad about them. 7If someone mourns his father or his mother who has died, no one will give him something to eat or drink to comfort him. 8And you must not go into a house where there is a feast and people eat and drink. 9Yes, the Lord who rules over all, the God of Israel, says: There will be no more feasts in this land, people will not be happy and rejoice, and they will not get married anymore. And all of this will happen in your time. You will see it happen. 10Jeremiah, when you have told all these things to the people, they will ask you: “Why did the Lord say these bad things will happen to us? What have we done wrong? What sin have we done against the Lord our God?” 11Then you must tell them: The Lord says: “It is because your forefathers served and worshipped other gods and they turned away from Me. They did not want to do what I said. 12And you have done even worse things than your forefathers. You are stubborn, you do and live as you want to and you are not obedient to Me. 13I will throw you away from this land into a land that you and your fathers do not know, and there you will have to work for other gods every day and every night and I will not feel sorry for you.” ’
14This is what the Lord says: ‘This will happen and that is why there will come a time when people will no longer say: “As sure as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites out of Egypt.” 15No, they will say: “As sure as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites from the land in the north and from all the lands to which He had chased them.”
Yes, I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers. 16But now I am sending a lot of enemies that will catch the Israelites like you catch fish, and they will kill some of the Israelites like people kill wild animals when they hunt. They will kill them on all the mountains and among the rocks. 17I am doing this because I see everything they do. They can not hide anything from Me. I see all the things they do that are wrong. 18I will punish them twice for every sin they do, and for everything that they do wrong. They have made my land impure with their dead idols. They have filled the land that belongs to Me with things that I hate.’
Nations from far away will come to the Lord
19I, Jeremiah, prayed and I said:
‘Lord, You are strong and
You make me strong and protect me.
You make me feel safe when there is danger.
Nations from far away will come to You
and they will say:
“Our fathers have worshipped_idols
that are not gods.
Those idols are worthless
and they can not help us.”
20People make idols for themselves,
but they are not gods.’
21The Lord answered and He said:
‘I will teach the Israelites.
I will teach them what I can do
and they will realise
that my name is the Lord.’
