The Prophet Forbidden to Marry
1 Then Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, 2 “You shall not take a wife, neither shall you have sons or daughters, in this place.” 3 For Yahweh says concerning the sons and concerning the daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them, and concerning their fathers who became their father in this land: 4 “They will die grievous deaths. They will not be lamented, neither will they be buried. They will be as dung on the surface of the ground. They will be consumed by the sword and by famine. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.” 5 For Yahweh says, “Don’t enter into the house of mourning. Don’t go to lament. Don’t bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people,” says Yahweh, “even loving kindness and tender mercies. 6 Both great and small will die in this land. They will not be buried. Men won’t lament for them, cut themselves, or make themselves bald for them. 7 Men won’t break bread for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead. Men won’t give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother. 8 “You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and to drink.” 9 For Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. 10 It will happen, when you tell this people all these words, and they ask you, ‘Why has Yahweh pronounced all this great evil against us?’ or ‘What is our iniquity?’ or ‘What is our sin that we have committed against Yahweh our God?’ 11 then you shall tell them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me,’ says Yahweh, ‘and have walked after other gods, have served them, have worshiped them, have forsaken me, and have not kept my law. 12 You have done evil more than your fathers, for behold, you each walk after the stubbornness of his evil heart, so that you don’t listen to me. 13 Therefore I will cast you out of this land into the land that you have not known, neither you nor your fathers. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’
Jeremiah is barred from marriage, from funerals and from parties, so that his own life becomes the announcement before he says anything.
Three prohibitions are laid on him, and together they remove a man from the whole social calendar of his village. He may not marry or have children. He may not enter a house of mourning to lament or comfort. He may not go into a house of feasting to eat and drink. Whatever else these cost him, they mean that his neighbors encounter the message every time an ordinary human occasion occurs without him.
The first is the heaviest, and the reason attached to it is not asceticism. Children born in this place will die grievous deaths and lie unburied, so the celibacy is a mercy withheld from being turned into a bereavement. That should govern how the requirement is read. It is not a claim that marriage is a lesser state; the book of the law treats offspring as blessing throughout, and God is the one who told him he was known before he was formed in a womb Jeremiah 1:5. What is being said is that the coming years are not years in which to start a family, and the prophet is required to live as though he believes his own message.
The ban on funerals says something further. Mourning rites in that culture were communal obligations, and to stay away was an insult; so the sign is deliberately offensive. What it dramatizes is stated plainly — I have taken away my peace from this people... even loving kindness and tender mercies — and it works by removing the human comforts that would ordinarily soften a death. No lamenting, no breaking of bread for the bereaved, no cup of consolation. A society that cannot bury and cannot comfort has lost the last thing it had.
Then comes the question the sign is designed to provoke, and it is asked in three forms: why has Yahweh pronounced all this evil against us, what is our iniquity, what is our sin? The bewilderment sounds genuine, and it is the strongest evidence in the chapter. Sixteen chapters of specific charges have produced a people who cannot name a single one of them. The answer given puts them past their fathers rather than level with them — you have done evil more than your fathers — and ends with the exile described as a granted wish: in that unknown land they will serve other gods day and night. They wanted them; they will have nothing else.
settled What this mark means