Jeremiah
31* At that time, quoth Jehovah, Israel’s clan shall have me for their God and I will have them for my people. 2* Says Jehovah, A people of survivors from the sword has found favor in the wilderness; Israel walks at ease. 3** Jehovah has appeared to me from afar: “I love you with perpetual love, therefore I stand your friend. 4 I will build you up again, built up you shall be, maid Israel; again you shall dress up with your tambourines and go out in a dance of merrymakers. 5** Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountainsides of Samaria, plant and harvest; 6* for there comes a day when on the highland of Ephraim keepers shall call ‘come on, let us go up to Sion to our God Jehovah.’”
7* For Jehovah says, Shout gladness to Jacob and whoop at the head of the nations; proclaim, praise, and say “Jehovah has saved his people, the remnant of Israel.” 8 Here I am bringing them from the north country and gathering them from the recesses of earth; among them blind man and lame man, pregnant woman and woman giving birth together, a great assembly they shall come back here. 9 In weeping they shall come, and in supplications I will bring them on; I will take them to arroyos of water by a smooth road that they will not stumble on, because I have become father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn son.
10 Listen to Jehovah’s word, nations, and tell it on far-off coasts, and say “He who dispersed Israel will gather them and will guard them as a shepherd does his flock; 11 for Jehovah has redeemed Jacob and recovered him out of the hands of one stronger than he. 12* And they will come and shout on the summit of Sion, and will stream to Jehovah’s good things, to grain and grape-juice and oil and young beasts of flock and herd, and their state will be like a watered garden, and never again shall they despair. 13 Then will maiden in dance make merry, and young men and old together, and I will turn their mourning to rejoicing and comfort them and gladden them out of all their sorrow. 14* And I will refresh the priests’ energies with rich food, and my people shall eat their fill of my good things, quoth Jehovah.”
15 Says Jehovah, A voice is heard at Ramah, lament and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping over her children, refusing to take comfort, because they are gone. 16 Says Jehovah, Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for your work gets its pay, quoth Jehovah, and they will come back from an enemy’s country; 17 and your future has a hope, quoth Jehovah, and sons will come back to their territory. 18 I hear Ephraim making his pathetic appeal, “You disciplined me and I yielded to discipline, like an untrained calf; bring me back and back I will come, for you are my God Jehovah. 19 For after I went back I repented, and after I was given instruction I hit my thigh; I am ashamed and humiliated, because I have borne the disgrace of my youth.” 20 Is Ephraim to me a specially hopeful son or a petted child, that as often as I mention him I keep remembering him? for this reason my bosom is in a turmoil over him; be kind to him I will, quoth Jehovah.
21 Set markers, place guideposts, fix your mind on the highway, the way you went; come back, maid Israel, come back to these cities of yours. 22 How long will you be dodging away, contrary daughter? For Jehovah has created a new thing on earth: a female goes round a man. 23** Says Israel’s God Jehovah of Armies, They shall again say this thing in the country and cities of Judah when I come back to them: “Jehovah bless you, holy ground, sacred highland”; 24* and Judah and all its cities shall be settled in it together, plowmen and men marching off with flocks, 25 because I have refreshed a fainting soul and fed full every soul that was despairing.
26** Upon this I woke and saw; and my sleep had been sweet to me.
27 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with seed of man and seed of cattle; 28 and as I have paid attention to them to uproot and pull down and demolish and destroy and do harm, so I will pay attention to them to build and plant, quoth Jehovah. 29 In those days they shall no longer say “Fathers ate green grapes and children’s teeth are set on edge,” 30 because each shall die for his own guilt; every man that eats the green grapes shall have his teeth set on edge.
31 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah 32 —not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, inasmuch as they broke my covenant and I was estranged from them, quoth Jehovah, 33 for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, quoth Jehovah: I will put my instructions within them and write them on their hearts, and they shall have me for their God and I will have them for my people, 34* and they shall no longer teach each other “Know Jehovah,” because they shall all of them know me from the least to the greatest, quoth Jehovah; for I will forgive their guilt and no longer remember their sin.
35 Says Jehovah who gives a sun for light by day, a system of moon and stars for light by night, who stirs the sea and its waves roar—his name is Jehovah of Armies: 36* If these laws of nature lose their standing before me, quoth Jehovah, so shall Israel’s descendants cease from being always a nation before me. 37 Says Jehovah, If the skies are moved above and earth’s foundations are explored beneath, so will I repudiate also Israel’s descendants for all that they have done, quoth Jehovah.
38 Here are days coming, quoth Jehovah, when the city shall be built up for Jehovah from Hananel’s tower to the corner gate, 39 and the measuring-line shall go straight ahead to Gareb Hill and around to Goʽah; 40* and all the vale, the corpses and the fat-ashes, and all the terraces to the bed of Kidron Arroyo, to the Pony-Gate corner to the east, shall be sacred to Jehovah; it shall not be uprooted or demolished.