8. ‘And do not enter a house where there is feasting and sit down to eat and drink.
9. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Before your eyes and in your days I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in this place.
10. ‘When you tell these people all this and they ask you, “Why has the Lord decreed such a great disaster against us? What wrong have we done? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God?”
11. then say to them, “It is because your ancestors forsook me,” declares the Lord, “and followed other gods and served and worshipped them. They forsook me and did not keep my law.
12. But you have behaved more wickedly than your ancestors. See how all of you are following the stubbornness of your evil hearts instead of obeying me.
13. So I will throw you out of this land into a land neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favour.”
14. ‘However, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when it will no longer be said, “As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,”
15. but it will be said, “As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.” For I will restore them to the land I gave to their ancestors.
16. ‘But now I will send for many fishermen,’ declares the Lord, ‘and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.
17. My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.