The People Have No Future in Their Land

¹The word of the Lord came to me:

²You are not to marry and not to have sons and daughters in this place. ³For thus said the Lord concerning any sons and daughters that may be born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bear them, and concerning the fathers who beget them in this land: ⁴They shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.

⁹For thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of bridegroom and bride.

¹⁰And when you announce all these things to that people, and they ask you, “Why has the Lord decreed upon us all this fearful evil? What is the iniquity and what the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” ¹¹say to them, “Because your fathers deserted Me—declares the Lord—and followed other gods and served them and worshiped them; they deserted Me and did not keep My Instruction. ¹²And you have acted worse than your fathers, every one of you following the willfulness of his evil heart and paying no heed to Me. ¹³Therefore I will hurl you out of this land to a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you will serve other gods, day and night; for I will show you no mercy.”