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Verse 3

GOD'S EXPLANATION OF THIS PROHIBITION

"For thus saith Jehovah concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning the fathers that begat them in this land: They shall die grievous deaths: they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung upon the face of the ground; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the heavens, and for the beasts of the earth."

A warning such as this would have been appropriate before the invasion and captivity; but can any intelligent person suggest why some "Deuteronomic editor" could possibly have written such a message a whole generation after the invasion and captivity had already happened? There could have been no point whatever in such an endeavor.

Notice also that the text plainly declares that God Himself gave these reasons for his forbidding Jeremiah to marry.

Halley paraphrased these verses thus: "What's the use of raising a family just to be butchered in the frightful carnage about to be loosed upon the inhabitants of Judah?"[8]

"In this place ... in this land ..." (Jeremiah 16:3). "This is not a reference to Anathoth nor to Jerusalem, but to the whole land of Judah."[9]

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