Jeremiah - Chapter 31

Passage

At that time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus says the Lord: The people that were left and escaped from the sword, found grace in the desert: Israel shall go to his rest. The Lord has appeared from afar to me. Yea I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn you, taking pity on you. And I will build you again, and you shall be built, O virgin of Israel: you shall again be adorned with your timbrels, and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry. You shall yet plant vineyards in the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant, and they shall not gather the vintage before the time. For there shall be a day, in which the watchmen on mount Ephraim, shall cry: Arise, and let us go up to Sion to the Lord our God. For thus says the Lord: Rejoice you in the joy of Jacob, and neigh before the head of the Gentiles: shout you, and sing, and say: Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel. Behold I will bring them from the north country, and will gather them from the ends of the earth and among them shall be the blind, and the lame, the woman with child, and she that is bringing forth, together, a great company of them returning here. They shall come with weeping: and I will bring them back in mercy: and I will bring them through the torrents of waters in a right way, and they shall not stumble in it: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn. Hear the word of the Lord, O you nations, and declare it in the islands that are afar off, and say: He that scattered Israel will gather him: and he will keep him as the shepherd does his flock. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and delivered him out of the hand of one that was mightier than he. And they shall come, and shall give praise in mount Sion: and they shall flow together to the good things of the Lord, for the corn, and wine, and oil, and the increase of cattle and herds, and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall be hungry no more. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, the young men and old men together: and I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them joyful after their sorrow. And I will fill the soul of the priests with fatness: and my people shall be filled with my good things, says the Lord. Thus says the Lord: A voice was heard on high of lamentation, of mourning, and weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted for them, because they are not. Thus says the Lord: Let your voice cease from weeping, and your eyes tears: for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: and they shall return out of the land of the enemy. And there is hope for your last end, says the Lord: and the children shall return to their own borders. Hearing I heard Ephraim when he went into captivity: you have chastised me, and I was instructed, as a young bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. Convert me, and I shall be converted, for you are the Lord my God. For after you did convert me, I did penance: and after you did show to me, I struck my thigh: I am confounded and ashamed, because I have borne the reproach of my youth. Surely Ephraim is an honorable son to me, surely he is a tender child: for since I spoke of him, I will still remember him. Therefore are my bowels troubled for him: pitying I will pity him, says the Lord. Set you up a watchtower, make to you bitterness: direct your heart into the right way, in which you have walked: return, O virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. How long will you be dissolute in deliciousness, O wandering daughter? for the Lord has created a new thing upon the earth: A WOMAN SHALL COMPASS A MAN. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: As yet shall they say this word in the land of Juda, and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring back their captivity: The Lord bless you, the beauty of justice, the holy mountain. And Juda and all his cities shall dwell therein together: the husbandman and they that drive the flocks. For I have inebriated the weary soul: and I have filled every hungry soul. Upon this I was as it were awaked out of a sleep, and I saw, and my sleep was sweet to me. Behold the days come, says the Lord: and I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Juda with the seed of men, and with the seed of beasts. And as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to throw down, and to scatter, and destroy, and afflict: so will I watch over them, to build up, and to plant them, says the Lord. In those days they shall say no more: The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the teeth of the children are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that shall eat the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold the days shall come, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Juda: Not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the covenant which they made void, and I had dominion over them, says the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, says the Lord: I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: Know the Lord: for all shall know me from the least of them even to the greatest, says the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for the light of the day, the order of the moon and of the stars, for the light of the night: who stirs up the sea, and the waves thereof roar, the Lord of hosts is his name. If these ordinances shall fail before me, says the Lord: then also the seed of Israel shall fail, so as not to be a nation before me for ever. Thus says the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I also will cast away all the seed of Israel, for all that they have done, says the Lord. Behold the days come, says the Lord, that the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hanameel even to the gate of the corner. And the measuring line shall go out farther in his sight upon the hill Gareb: and it shall compass Goatha, And the whole valley of dead bodies, and of ashes, and all the country of death, even to the torrent Cedron, and to the corner of the horse gate towards the east, the Holy of the Lord: it shall not be plucked up, and it shall not be destroyed any more for ever.