Yirmiyahu 16 | And I Will Banish the Sound of Joy and the Sound of Happiness

Yirmiyahu is called to embody the content of his prophecy in his own life. In the near future, people will no longer establish new families, old families will break apart, and children will die young — therefore, he is forbidden to marry or have children. In the coming days, death will become so commonplace, and mourning so frequent, that people will cease to grieve for the dead — and so, Yirmiyahu is also forbidden to mourn.

The phrase "the sound of joy and the sound of happiness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride" is well known, appearing in a positive context later in the book’s prophecies of consolation (Yirmiyahu 33:11). Yet its first appearance is here, in the context of destruction: "I am about to banish from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the sound of joy and the sound of happiness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride." (13:9)

Amidst these verses of devastation, there seemingly appear verses of consolation, describing the scope of redemption that will follow the exile: "Therefore, days are approaching, declares the Lord, when it will no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who has brought the Israelites up from the land of Egypt,’ but rather: ‘As the Lord lives who has brought the Israelites up from the land of the north and from all the lands to which He had expelled them’; I will return them to their own soil, which I gave to their fathers.’"

In fact, these are verses of "consolation" only in our eyes, while in their original context, they are terrifying words of calamity. For those who have already endured destruction, the promise of redemption brings comfort. But for the people of that generation — who sat securely in their land, celebrated weddings and feasts as usual, and did not truly believe in the looming destruction — verses describing a redemption even greater than the Exodus from Egypt serve only to emphasize the magnitude of the exile that will necessitate such a salvation.