God had some interesting commands for some of his prophets.
The Sabbath lesson points out some interesting text that I was unaware of.
Ezekiel, at the same time, ministered to the captives in Babylon. Both prophets borrowed the marriage metaphor for Judah. Jeremiah himself never married. God instructed him not to marry or to enter a house for a feast because the sounds of gladness and of marriage were coming to an end (Jer 16:2-4, 8, 9). Ezekiel's wife was taken away suddenly as a sign that the temple was about to be destroyed (Ezek. 24:15-21).
To me the authors of the lesson have inserted their interpretation of this scripture. "You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place." This command doesn't mean that Jeremiah never married, just that he wasn't to "in this place" which I assume to be Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 16:2-4
2 "You must not marry and have sons or daughters in this place." 3 For this is what the LORD says about the sons and daughters born in this land and about the women who are their mothers and the men who are their fathers: 4 "They will die of deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried but will be like refuse lying on the ground. They will perish by sword and famine, and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth."
There are some who think that Jeremiah the prophet was the same Jeremiah as refered to in 2 Kings 23: 31, & 24: 18, "Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." Hamutal being one of the wives of king Josiah of Judah, who had two son's on the throne sit of Judah.
Some think that the daughters of the king were related to Jeremiah. Why did he go into Egypt with these people when they were commanded not to go?
Jeremiah 43:6 Even men, and women, and children, and the king's daughters, and every person that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah.
7So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: thus came they even to Tahpanhes.
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