Study Desk

The Lord , the holy God of Israel, the one who shapes the future, says: "You have no right to question me about my children or to tell me what I ought to do!

"Listen to this, you lover of pleasure, you that think you are safe and secure. You claim you are as great as God— that there is no one else like you. You thought that you would never be a widow or suffer the loss of your children.

But in a moment, in a single day, both of these things will happen. In spite of all the magic you use, you will lose your husband and children.

Then you will say to yourself, ‘Who bore all these children for me? I lost my children and could have no more. I was exiled and driven away— who brought these children up? I was left all alone— where did these children come from?'"

The Sovereign Lord says to his people: "I will signal to the nations, and they will bring your children home.

The Lord replies, "That is just what is going to happen. The soldier's prisoners will be taken away, and the tyrant's loot will be seized. I will fight against whoever fights you, and I will rescue your children.

The Lord says, "Do you think I sent my people away like a man who divorces his wife? Where, then, are the papers of divorce? Do you think I sold you into captivity like a man who sells his children as slaves? No, you went away captive because of your sins; you were sent away because of your crimes.

Think of your ancestor, Abraham, and of Sarah, from whom you are descended. When I called Abraham, he was childless, but I blessed him and gave him children; I made his descendants numerous.

Jerusalem, you have been like a childless woman, but now you can sing and shout for joy. Now you will have more children than a woman whose husband never left her.

A foreigner who has joined the Lord 's people should not say, "The Lord will not let me worship with his people." A man who has been castrated should never think that because he cannot have children, he can never be part of God's people.

You worship the fertility gods by having sex under those sacred trees of yours. You offer your children as sacrifices in the rocky caves near stream beds.

And I make a covenant with you: I have given you my power and my teachings to be yours forever, and from now on you are to obey me and teach your children and your descendants to obey me for all time to come."

Look around you and see what is happening: Your people are gathering to come home! Your sons will come from far away; Your daughters will be carried like children.

The work they do will be successful, and their children will not meet with disaster. I will bless them and their descendants for all time to come.

The Lord says, "My people are stupid; they don't know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good."

Your anger against them burns in me too, Lord , and I can't hold it in any longer." Then the Lord said to me, "Pour out my anger on the children in the streets and on the gatherings of the young people. Husbands and wives will be taken away, and even the very old will not be spared.

And so I will make these people stumble and fall. Parents and children will die, and so will friends and neighbors."

The children gather firewood, the men build fires, and the women mix dough to bake cakes for the goddess they call the Queen of Heaven. They also pour out offerings of wine to other gods, in order to hurt me.

Death has come in through our windows and entered our palaces; it has cut down the children in the streets and the young men in the marketplaces.

Our tents are ruined; the ropes that held them have broken. Our children have all gone away; there is no one left to put up our tents again; there is no one to hang their curtains."