Do not take a wife
1 The word of Yahweh came to me in these terms:
2 “Do not take a wife nor have sons and daughters in this place,
3 for this is what Yahweh says about sons and daughters born here, and about fathers and mothers who bring them to light in this country:
4 All will die of fatal diseases and no one will mourn for them or bury them; their corpses will be like dung on the ground. They will perish by the sword and by starvation and their corpses will be devoured by birds of prey and wild animals.”
5 Yahweh further insisted, “Do not go into a house of mourning; neither weep nor loudly lament with the bereaved for I have already withdrawn my peace from these people – even my unwavering love and compassion.
6 Both the great and the lowly in this country will perish and no one will mourn for them or bury them. No one shall gash his skin or shave his head as an act of mourning.
7 No funeral meal shall be shared to comfort the bereaved or console them on the death of their fathers and mothers.
8 Do not go to a house of celebration to feast with them before foods and drinks, Jer 25,109 for Yahweh, Saboath God of Israel has this to say:
9 In this place and before your very eyes, I will muffle every sound of pleasure and joy, even the song of the newlywed.
10 When you announce all these things to the people, they will ask you: ‘Why has Yahweh decided to bring such terrible disasters on us? What wickedness or sin have we committed against Yah weh our God?’
11 Then you shall tell them: ‘It is be cause your ancestors turned away from me and went after other gods to serve and worship them. They have forsaken me and refused to obey my Law.
12 But you are worse than your forebearers be cause each of you has gone his own evil ways following his stubborn heart in complete defiance of me.
13 Therefore, I will kick you out of this land into a place which is strange to you and your forebearers. There, you will serve other gods day and night, and you will get no compassion from me.’ ”
14 Yahweh says, “The days are coming when people will no longer say, ‘Yahweh is a living God for he brought the Is raelites out of Egypt,’
15 Rather, they will say, ‘Yahweh is a living God for he liberated the Israelites out of the northern land and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ Yes, I will bring them back to their own country – the land that I bestowed to their forebearers.”
16 But now Yahweh says, “I am sending for many fishermen to catch them. After wards, I will send for many hunters to hunt them down on every mountain, hill and cave in the rocks.
17 The things that they do are manifest before my eyes and the sins that they commit are not hidden from me.
18 I will make them pay double for their wickedness and sin; they have contaminated my land with their idols that are as dead as corpses and have filled it with their abominations.”
Will people make their own gods?
19 Yahweh, my strength and my for tress,
my refuge in times of distress!
From the furthest limits of the earth
nations will come to you and say,
“Our ancestors possessed only false hood,
worthless idols bereft of power.”
20 Will people make their own gods?
Then they are not gods!
21 Hence Yahweh says: “I will show
and let them know my power and my might.
And they will know that Yahweh is my name.”
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Comments Jeremiah, Chapter 16
• 16.1 Do not take a wife. The prophets discover that God is the true Spouse. God’s passionate and faithful love for his people is the model for married love. Since prophets become the mouth piece and the representative of God, all that they do becomes a sign. Thus, they cannot seek a happy marriage as long as Israel, Yahweh’s bride, turns her back on her God.
And so, before Jeremiah, another prophet, Ho sea, only knew the suffering of the betrayed hus band in his home and he had to constantly forgive his adulterous wife (Hos 3:1). Ezekiel sees his wife die suddenly (Ezk 24:15). Jere miah will have neither wife nor children; it is not fitting for him to marry at the very time the first covenant is being destroyed. Later, neither John the Baptist, nor the apostle John, nor Paul will marry: this will become a sign. Thus, they will help us understand that they only live for the coming marriage of Christ and his glorified Church, of which marriage is only an image.
• 10. Following we have parts of discourses that Jeremiah made on very different occasions.
– You will notice in 17:5-11 that similar content is found in several Psalms, and especially in Psalm 1. Where it says “he”, can also be read as “she”.
– The prayer 17:14-18.