The Bible in Basic English BBE
Good News Translation GNT
1 Then again the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
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Again the Lord spoke to me and said,
2 You are not to take a wife for yourself or have sons or daughters in this place.
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"Do not marry or have children in a place like this.
3 For this is what the Lord has said about the sons and daughters who come to birth in this place, and about their mothers who have given them birth, and about their fathers who have given life to them in this land:
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I will tell you what is going to happen to the children who are born here and to their parents.
4 Death from evil diseases will overtake them; there will be no weeping for them and their bodies will not be put to rest; they will be like waste on the face of the earth: the sword and need of food will put an end to them; their dead bodies will be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.
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They will die of terrible diseases, and no one will mourn for them or bury them. Their bodies will lie like piles of manure on the ground. They will be killed in war or die of starvation, and their bodies will be food for the birds and the wild animals.
5 For this is what the Lord has said: Do not go into the house of sorrow, do not go to make weeping or songs of grief for them: for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, even mercy and pity.
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"You must not enter a house where there is mourning. Do not grieve for anyone. I will no longer bless my people with peace or show them love and mercy.
6 Death will overtake great as well as small in the land: their bodies will not be put in a resting-place, and no one will be weeping for them or wounding themselves or cutting off their hair for them:
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The rich and the poor will die in this land, but no one will bury them or mourn for them. Not one of you will gash yourself or shave your head to show your grief.
7 No one will make a feast for them in sorrow, to give them comfort for the dead, or put to their lips the cup of comfort on account of their father or their mother.
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No one will eat or drink with anyone to offer comfort when a loved one dies. No one will show sympathy, not even for someone who has lost a father or mother.
8 And you are not to go into the house of feasting, or be seated with them to take food or drink.
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"Do not enter a house where people are feasting. Do not sit down with them to eat and drink.
9 For the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said, See, before your eyes and in your days I will put an end in this place to the laughing voices and the voice of joy; to the voice of the newly-married man and the voice of the bride.
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Listen to what I, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, have to say. I will silence the sounds of joy and gladness and the happy sounds of wedding feasts. The people here will live to see this happen.
10 And it will be, that when you say all these words to the people, then they will say to you, Why has the Lord done all this evil against us? what is our wrongdoing and what is our sin which we have done against the Lord our God?
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"When you tell them all this, they will ask you why I have decided to punish them so harshly. They will ask what crime they are guilty of and what sin they have committed against the Lord their God.
11 Then you will say to them, Because your fathers have given me up, says the Lord, and have gone after other gods and become their servants and their worshippers, and have given me up and have not kept my law;
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Then tell them that the Lord has said, "Your ancestors turned away from me and worshiped and served other gods. They abandoned me and did not obey my teachings.
12 And you have done worse evil than your fathers; for see, every one of you is guided by the pride of his evil heart, so as not to give ear to me:
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But you have done even worse than your ancestors. All of you are stubborn and evil, and you do not obey me.
13 For this reason I will send you away out of this land into a land which is strange to you, to you and to your fathers; there you will be the servants of other gods day and night, and you will have no mercy from me.
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So then, I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. And there you will serve other gods day and night, and I will show you no mercy.' "
14 For this cause, see, the days are coming, says the Lord, when it will no longer be said, By the living Lord, who took the children of Israel up out of the land of Egypt.
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The Lord says, "The time is coming when people will no longer swear by me as the living God who brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
15 But, By the living Lord, who took the children of Israel up out of the land of the north, and from all the countries where he had sent them: and I will take them back again to their land which I gave to their fathers.
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Instead, they will swear by me as the living God who brought the people of Israel out of a northern land and out of all the other countries where I had scattered them. I will bring them back to their own country, to the land that I gave their ancestors. I, the Lord, have spoken."
16 See, I will send for great numbers of fishermen, says the Lord, and they will take them like fish in a net; and after that, I will send for numbers of bowmen, and they will go after them, driving them from every mountain and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.
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The Lord says, "I am sending for many fishermen to come and catch these people. Then I will send for many hunters to hunt them down on every mountain and hill and in the caves among the rocks.
17 For my eyes are on all their ways: there is no cover for them from my face, and their evil-doing is not kept secret from my eyes.
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I see everything they do. Nothing is hidden from me; their sins do not escape my sight.
18 And I will give them the reward of their evil-doing and their sin twice over; because they have made my land unclean, and have made my heritage full of the bodies of their unholy and disgusting things.
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I will make them pay double for their sin and wickedness, because they have defiled my land with idols that are as lifeless as corpses, and have filled it with their false gods."
19 O Lord, my strength and my strong tower, my safe place in the day of trouble, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, and say, The heritage of our fathers is nothing but deceit, even false things in which there is no profit.
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Lord, you are the one who protects me and gives me strength; you help me in times of trouble. Nations will come to you from the ends of the earth and say, "Our ancestors had nothing but false gods, nothing but useless idols.
20 Will a man make for himself gods which are no gods?
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Can people make their own gods? No, if they did, those would not really be gods."
21 For this reason, truly, I will make them see, this once I will give them knowledge of my hand and my power; and they will be certain that my name is the Lord.
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"So then," says the Lord, "once and for all I will make the nations know my power and my might; they will know that I am the Lord."
The Bible in Basic English is in the public domain.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.