Jer 31 | ACV | STEP | At that time, says Jehovah, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.

‏ Jeremiah 31

1 At that time, says Jehovah, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. 2 Thus says Jehovah: The people who were left of the sword found favor in the wilderness, even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. 3 Jehovah appeared of old to me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn thee. 4 Again I will build thee, and thou shall be built, O virgin of Israel. Again thou shall be adorned with thy tambourine, and shall go forth in the dances of those who make merry. 5 Again thou shall plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria. The planters shall plant, and shall enjoy it. 6 For there shall be a day that the watchmen upon the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion to Jehovah our God. 7 For thus says Jehovah: Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout for the chief of the nations. Publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Jehovah, save thy people, the remnant of Israel. 8 Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the outermost parts of the earth, and with them the blind man and the lame man, the woman with child, and she who travails with child together. They shall return here a great company. 9 They shall come with weeping. And I will lead them with supplications. I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they shall not stumble. For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn. 10 Hear the word of Jehovah, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock. 11 For Jehovah has ransomed Jacob, and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he. 12 And they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow to the goodness of Jehovah, to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd. And their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more at all. 13 Then the virgin shall rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old together, for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. 14 And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, says Jehovah. 15 Thus says Jehovah: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted for her children, because they are not. 16 Thus says Jehovah: Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, says Jehovah, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. 17 And there is hope for thy latter end, says Jehovah, and thy sons shall come again to their own border. 18 I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself saying, Thou have chastised me, and I was chastised as a calf unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn thou me back, and I shall be turned back, for thou are Jehovah my God. 19 Surely after that I was turned back. I repented, and after I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed, yea, 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 do earnestly remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy upon him, says Jehovah. 21 Set thee up road marks. Make thee guideposts. Set thy heart toward the highway, even the way by which thou went. Turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities. 22 How long will thou go here and there, O thou backsliding daughter? For Jehovah has created a new thing in the earth: a woman shall encompass a man. 23 Thus says Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Yet again they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof when I shall bring again their captivity: Jehovah bless thee, O habitation of righteousness, O mountain of holiness. 24 And Judah and all the cities thereof shall dwell in there together, the husbandmen, and those who go about with flocks. 25 For I have satiated the weary soul, and every sorrowful soul I have replenished. 26 Upon this I awoke, and beheld, and my sleep was sweet to me. 27 Behold, the days come, says Jehovah, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. 28 And it shall come to pass that, just 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 Jehovah. 29 In those days they shall no more say, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the son's teeth are set on edge. 30 But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. 31 Behold, the days come, says Jehovah, 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, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says Jehovah. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Jehovah: I will give my laws into their mind, and I will write them on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says Jehovah. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. 35 Thus says Jehovah, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that the waves thereof roar. Jehovah of hosts is his name. 36 If these ordinances depart from before me, says Jehovah, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. 37 Thus says Jehovah: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says Jehovah. 38 Behold, the days come, says Jehovah, that the city shall be built to Jehovah from the tower of Hananel to the gate of the corner. 39 And the measuring line shall go out further straight onward to the hill Gareb, and shall turn about to Goah. 40 And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields, to the brook Kidron, to the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be holy to Jehovah. It shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever.