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When I returned home I was reunited with my wife Anna and my son Tobias. At the Harvest Festival, which is also called the Festival of Weeks, I sat down to a delicious meal.
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When I saw how much food there was on the table, I said to Tobias, "Son, go out and find one of our people who is living in poverty here in exile, someone who takes God's commands seriously. Bring him back with you, so that he can share this festival meal with us. I won't start eating until you come back."
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So Tobias went out to look for such a person. But he quickly returned, shouting, "Father! Father!" "Yes, what is it?" I asked. "One of our people has just been murdered! Someone strangled him and threw his body into the marketplace."
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I jumped up and left the table without even touching my food. I removed the body from the street and carried it to a little shed, where I left it until sunset, when I could bury it.
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Then I returned home and washed, so as to purify myself. In deep sorrow I ate my dinner.
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I was reminded of what the prophet Amos had said to the people of Bethel,
3 "Your festivals will be turned into funerals, and your glad songs will become cries of grief." I began to weep.
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After sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried the man.
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My neighbors thought I was crazy. "Haven't you learned anything?" they asked. "You have already been hunted down once for burying the dead, and you would have been killed if you had not run away. But here you are doing the same thing all over again."
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That night I washed, so as to purify myself, and went out into my courtyard to sleep by the wall. It was a hot night, and I did not pull the cover up over my head.