1. This word came to me from the Lord:
2. Do not take a wife and do not have sons and daughters in this place,
3. for thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, the mothers who give them birth, the fathers who beget them in this land:
4. Of deadly disease they shall die. Unlamented and unburied they will lie like dung on the ground. Sword and famine will make an end of them, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.
5. Thus says the Lord: Do not go into a house of mourning; do not go there to lament or grieve for them. For I have withdrawn my peace from this people—oracle of the Lord—my love and my compassion.
6. They shall die, the great and the lowly, in this land, unburied and unlamented. No one will gash themselves or shave their heads for them.
7. They will not break bread with the bereaved to offer consolation for the dead; they will not give them the cup of consolation to drink over the death of father or mother.