Jeremiah 16:7

Hebrew Bible

5 “Moreover I, the Lord, tell you: ‘Do not go into a house where they are having a funeral meal. Do not go there to mourn and express your sorrow for them. For I have stopped showing them my good favor, my love, and my compassion. I, the Lord, so affirm it! 6 Rich and poor alike will die in this land. They will not be buried or mourned. People will not cut their bodies or shave off their hair to show their grief for them. 7 No one will take any food to those who mourn for the dead to comfort them. No one will give them any wine to drink to console them for the loss of their father or mother. 8 “‘Do not go to a house where people are feasting and sit down to eat and drink with them either. 9 For I, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, tell you what will happen. I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness, to the glad celebration of brides and grooms in this land. You and the rest of the people will live to see this happen.’

Letter of Jeremiah 1:30

Deuterocanon

28 The priests sell the sacrifices that are offered to these gods and use the money themselves. Likewise their wives preserve some of the meat with salt, but give none to the poor or helpless. 29 Sacrifices to them may even be touched by women in their periods or at childbirth. Since you know by these things that they are not gods, do not fear them. 30 For how can they be called gods? Women serve meals for gods of silver and gold and wood; 31 and in their temples the priests sit with their clothes torn, their heads and beards shaved, and their heads uncovered. 32 They howl and shout before their gods as some do at a funeral banquet.

 Notes and References

"... there are likely numerous references to cult of the dead activities in Trito-Isaiah. Those who are described in Isaiah 65:3 as “provoking [YHWH] to his face continually” are specifically charged with “sitting in tombs and spending the night among rocks.” Similar practices are probably in view in chapter 57, which refers to both child sacrifice (verse 5) and Molek (verse 9); particularly if the difficult word in verse 6 is related to the dead (“Your portion is with the perished of the wadi ...”), the passage is clearly condemning death cults. Francesca Stavrakopoulou has further argued that the gardens condemned in Isaiah 65:3–5, 66:17 and 1:29–30 were mortuary gardens and thus also manifestations of cults of the dead. And of course, the book ends with the unforgettable image of “the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against [YHWH]; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” This nascent image of hell is the apotheosis of the “aversion therapy” technique that was pioneered centuries earlier by Isaiah himself. The precise significance of many of these later instances of the tradition are contested; they deserve and have generated fairly extensive scholarship, which cannot be summarized here. It is clear enough that cults of the dead continued to be a major preoccupation in the postexilic period (Letter of Jeremiah 27; Sirach 30:18; Tobit 4:17; Note also Baruch 3:10-11) ..."

Hays, Christopher B. Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah (p. 360) Mohr Siebeck, 2011

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