In Context

14 "However, the days are coming," declares the Lord , "when men will no longer say, 'As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,'

15 but they will say, 'As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.' For I will restore them to the land I gave their forefathers.

16 "But now I will send for many fishermen," declares the Lord , "and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.

17 My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.

18 I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the lifeless forms of their vile images and have filled my inheritance with their detestable idols."

19 O Lord , my strength and my fortress, my refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, "Our fathers possessed nothing but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good.

Jeremiah 16:17 in Other Translations