The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex.[4] Jeremiah 16 is a part of the Sixth prophecy (Jeremiah 14-17) in the section of Prophecies of Destruction (Jeremiah 1-25). {P}: open parashah; {S}: closed parashah.
"You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place."[5]
According to Reformation theologian John Calvin, "the prohibition to marry was full of meaning; it was to show that the people were wholly given up to destruction".[6]
Verse 3
For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land:[7]
Verse 4
... they shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried.[8]
Repeated in verse 6:
They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them.[9]
Verse 5
"Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people", says the Lord.[10]
Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel is instructed not to mourn when his own wife dies.[11]
^The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Augmented Third Edition, New Revised Standard Version, Indexed. Michael D. Coogan, Marc Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, Editors. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2007. p. 1103-1105 Hebrew Bible. ISBN978-0195288810