15. the Lord says:“A voice is heard in Ramah,lamentation and bitter weeping,Rachel weeping for her children.She refuses to be comforted for her children,because they are no more.”
16. the Lord says:“Refrain your voice from weeping,and your eyes from tears;for your work will be rewarded,” says the Lord.“They will come again from the land of the enemy.
17. There is hope for your latter end,” says the Lord.“Your children will come again to their own territory.
18. “I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus,‘You have chastised me,and I was chastised, as an untrained calf.Turn me, and I will be turned;for you are the Lord my God.
19. Surely after that I was turned.I repented.After that I was instructed.I struck my thigh.I was ashamed, yes, even confounded,because I bore the reproach of my youth.’
20. Is Ephraim my dear son?Is he a darling child?For as often as I speak against him,I still earnestly remember him.therefore my heart yearns for him.I will surely have mercy on him,” says the Lord.
21. “Set up road signs.Make guideposts.Set your heart towards the highway,even the way by which you went.Turn again, virgin of Israel.Turn again to these your cities.
22. How long will you go here and there,you backsliding daughter?For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth:a woman will encompass a man.”
23. the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Yet again they will use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I reverse their captivity: ‘the Lord bless you, habitation of righteousness, mountain of holiness.’
24. Judah and all its cities will dwell therein together, the farmers, and those who go about with flocks.
25. For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.”
26. On this I awakened, and saw; and my sleep was sweet to me.
27. “Behold, the days come,” says the Lord, “that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of animal.
28. It will happen that, like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” says the Lord.
29. “In those days they will say no more,“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
30. But everyone will die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.
31. “Behold, the days come,” says the Lord,“that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel,and with the house of Judah:
32. not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt;which covenant of mine they broke,although I was a husband to them,” says the Lord.