31
📚“At that time”, says the LORD, “I will be the God of all the families✭ of Israel, and they will be my people”.2 📚✭Thus says the LORD:
“The people who survived the sword,
Israel, found grace in the wilderness,
when I went to give him rest”.
3 📚✭The LORD has appeared to me
in the past✭,
saying, “Yes, I have loved you
with an everlasting love;
therefore with loving kindness
I have drawn you.
4 📚✭I will build you again, and you will be built,
O virgin of Israel. You will again be adorned
with your tambourines,
and will go out in the dances of those
who make merry.
5 📚You will yet plant vines on the mountains
of Samaria.
The planters will plant, and will eat them
like common things.
6 📚✭For there will be a day when
the watchmen on Mount Ephraim
will cry out,
‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion
to the LORD our God.’ ”
7 📚For thus says the LORD:
“Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout among the chief✭
of the nations. Proclaim!
Praise! And say, ‘O LORD,
save your people, the remnant of Israel.’
8 📚See, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the ends
of the earth, and with them
the blind and the lame,
the woman with child together
with the one in labour with child.
A great throng✭ will return there.
9 📚✭They will come with weeping,
and as they are making supplications
I will lead them.
I will cause them to walk by the rivers
of water in a straight way,
in which they will not stumble.
For I am a father to Israel,
and Ephraim✭ is my firstborn”.
10 📚Hear the word of the LORD,
O you nations, and declare it
in the islands far away,
and say, “He who scattered Israel
will gather him, and keep him,
as a shepherd does his flock”.
11 📚For the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
and ransomed him from the hand
of one who was stronger than he.
12 📚Therefore they will come and sing
on the heights of Zion,
and will stream together to the goodness
of the LORD,
for wheat and for wine and for oil and
for the young of the flock and of the herd.
And their soul will be like a watered garden,
and they will not grieve any more at all✭.
13 📚“Then will the virgin rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old together.
For I will turn their mourning into joy,
and will comfort them, and give them joy
in place of their sorrow.
14 📚And I will satisfy the soul of the priests
with fatness, and my people will be
satisfied with my goodness”,
says the LORD.
15 📚✭Thus says the LORD:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation
and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children refused
to be comforted for her children,
because they were no more”.
16 📚✭Thus says the LORD:
“Restrain your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,
says the LORD,
and they will come back from the land
of the enemy.
17 📚And there is hope in your future,
says the LORD, that your children will
come back into their own borders.
18 📚✭I have surely heard Ephraim mourning,
‘You have disciplined me,
and I have been disciplined, like an ox
unaccustomed to the yoke.
Turn me, and I will be turned;
for you are the LORD my God.
19 📚✭Surely after I had turned away,
I repented, and after I was instructed,
I slapped my thigh.
I was ashamed, yes, humiliated,
because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
20 📚✭Is Ephraim my dear son?
Is he a delightful child?
For though I have spoken against him,
I earnestly remember him still.
Therefore my inmost being yearns for him.
I will certainly have mercy on him”,
says the LORD.
21 📚✭“Set up road signs, make guideposts,
set your heart toward the highway,
the way which you went.
Turn back, O virgin of Israel,
turn back to these cities of yours.
22 📚How long will you gad about,
O backsliding daughter?
For the LORD has created a new thing
in the earth: A woman surrounding✭ a man”.
23 📚✭Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “They will once more use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring them back from captivity✭, ‘The LORD bless you, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness✭.’ 24 📚And in Judah itself, and in all its cities, there will live farmers, and those who go out with flocks. 25 📚For I will satisfy the weary soul, and refresh every sorrowful soul”.
26 📚✭At this I awoke, and looked around. And my sleep had been sweet to me.
27 📚✭“See, the days are coming”, says the LORD, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of man, and with the offspring of beast. 28 📚And it will come about, that just as I watched over them to uproot them, and to break and throw them down, and to ruin and afflict them, so I will watch over them, to build and plant them, says the LORD.
29 📚✭“In those days they will no longer say,
‘The fathers have eaten a sour grape,
and the children’s teeth have been
set on edge.’
30 📚But everyone will die for his own guilt; the teeth of each one who eats a sour grape will be set on edge.
The New Covenant
31 📚✭“See, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah✭,
32 📚Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. This covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband✭ to them, says the LORD.
33 📚But this will be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts✭; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
34 📚✭And no longer will everyone teach his neighbour, and everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD’, for they will all know✭ me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD, For I will forgive✭ their wickedness, and I will remember their sin no more.
35 📚✭“Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun
as a light by day,
and the fixed order of the moon
and of the stars as a light by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar,
the LORD of hosts is his name:
36 📚If this fixed order departs from
before me, says the LORD,
then the offspring of Israel will also
cease from being a nation
before me forever.
37 📚Thus says the LORD:
If the heavens above can be measured,
and the foundations of the earth
searched out below,
I will also cast off all the offspring
of Israel for all that they have done,
says the LORD.
38 📚✭“See, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when the city will be built for the LORD from the Tower of Hananeel to the Corner Gate. 39 📚And the measuring line will yet go out opposite it on the hill Gareb, and will go around to Goath. 40 📚And the whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes, and all the fields to the Kidron valley, to the corner of the Horse Gate on the east, will be holy to the LORD. It will not be uprooted or thrown down any more forever”.