Jeremiah 16
16
Can Mortals Manufacture Gods?
1 God’s Message to me:
2-4“Jeremiah, don’t get married. Don’t raise a family here. I have signed the death warrant on all the children born in this country, the mothers who bear them and the fathers who beget them—an epidemic of death. Death unlamented, the dead unburied, dead bodies decomposing and stinking like dung, all the killed and starved corpses served up as meals for carrion crows and mongrel dogs!”
5-7 God continued: “Don’t enter a house where there’s mourning. Don’t go to the funeral. Don’t sympathize. I’ve quit caring about what happens to this people.” God’s Decree. “No more loyal love on my part, no more compassion. The famous and obscure will die alike here, unlamented and unburied. No funerals will be conducted, no one will give them a second thought, no one will care, no one will say, ‘I’m sorry,’ no one will so much as offer a cup of tea, not even for the mother or father.
8“And if there happens to be a feast celebrated, don’t go there either to enjoy the festivities.”
9 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Watch this! I’m about to banish smiles and laughter from this place. No more brides and bridegrooms celebrating. And I’m doing it in your lifetime, before your very eyes.
10-13“When you tell this to the people and they ask, ‘Why is God talking this way, threatening us with all these calamities? We’re not criminals, after all. What have we done to our God to be treated like this?’ tell them this: ‘It’s because your ancestors left me, walked off and never looked back. They took up with the no-gods, worshiped and doted on them, and ignored me and wouldn’t do a thing I told them. And you’re even worse! Take a good look in the mirror—each of you doing whatever you want, whenever you want, refusing to pay attention to me. And for this I’m getting rid of you, throwing you out in the cold, into a far and strange country. You can worship your precious no-gods there to your heart’s content. Rest assured, I won’t bother you anymore.’
* * *
14-15“On the other hand, don’t miss this: The time is coming when no one will say any longer, ‘As sure as God lives, the God who delivered Israel from Egypt.’ What they’ll say is, ‘As sure as God lives, the God who brought Israel back from the land of the north, brought them back from all the places where he’d scattered them.’ That’s right, I’m going to bring them back to the land I first gave to their ancestors.
* * *
16-17“Now, watch for what comes next: I’m going to assemble a bunch of fishermen.” God’s Decree! “They’ll go fishing for my people and pull them in for judgment. Then I’ll send out a party of hunters, and they’ll hunt them out in all the mountains, hills, and caves. I’m watching their every move. I haven’t lost track of a single one of them, neither them nor their sins.
18“They won’t get by with a thing. They’ll pay double for everything they did wrong. They’ve made a complete mess of things, littering their lives with their obscene no-gods, leaving piles of stinking god-junk all over the place.”
19-20 God, my strength, my stronghold,
my safe retreat when trouble descends:
The godless nations will come
from earth’s four corners, saying,
“Our ancestors lived on lies,
useless illusions, all smoke.”
Can mortals manufacture gods?
Their factories turn out no-gods!
21“Watch closely now. I’m going to teach these wrongheaded people.
Starting right now, I’m going to teach them
Who I am and what I do,
teach them the meaning of my name, God—‘I Am.’”
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Jeremiah 16: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Jeremias (Jeremiah) 16
16
1And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:
2Thou shalt not take thee a wife neither shalt thou have sons and daughters in this place.
3For thus saith the Lord, concerning the sons and daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bore them, and concerning their fathers of whom they were born in this land:
4They shall die by the death of grievous illnesses: they shall not be lamented and they shall not be buried: they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed with the sword and with famine: and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of the air and for the beasts of the earth.
5For thus saith the Lord: Enter not into the house of feasting, neither go thou to mourn, nor to comfort them: because I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the Lord, my mercy and commiserations.
6Both the great and the little shall die in the land. They shall not be buried nor lamented: and men shall not cut themselves nor make themselves bald for them.
7And they shall not break bread among them to him that mourneth, to comfort him for the dead: neither shall they give them to drink of the cup, to comfort them for their father and mother.
8And do not thou go into the house of feasting, to sit with them and to eat and drink:
9For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will take away out of this place in your sight, and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
10And when thou shalt tell this people all these words and they shall say to thee: Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced against us all this great evil? What is our iniquity? and what is our sin, that we have sinned against the Lord our God?
11Thou shalt say to them: Because your fathers forsook me, saith the Lord, and went after strange gods and served them and adored them: and they forsook me and kept not my law.
12And you also have done worse than your fathers: for, behold, every one of you walketh after the perverseness of his evil heart, so as not to hearken to me.
13So I will cast you forth out of this land, into a land which you know not, nor you fathers: and there you shall serve strange gods, day and night, which shall not give you any rest.
14Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when it shall be said no more: The Lord liveth, that brought for the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt:
15But, the Lord liveth, that brought the children of Israel out of the land of the north and out of all the lands to which I cast them out. And I will bring them again into their land, which I gave to their fathers.
16Behold, I will send many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them: and after this, I will send them many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks.
17For my eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, and their iniquity hath not been hid from my eyes.
18And I will repay first their double iniquities and their sins: because they have defiled my land with the carcasses of their idols, and they have filled my inheritance with their abominations.
19O Lord, my might and my strength and my refuge in the day of tribulation: to thee the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth and shall say: Surely our fathers have possessed lies, a vanity which hath not profited them.
20Shall a man make gods unto himself, and there are no gods?
21Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will shew them my hand and my power: and they shall know that my name is the Lord.
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An historical text maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society.