Patience in Suffering

⁷ Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.^(A)

²⁰ Thus says the Lord: If any of you could break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night would not come at their appointed time,^{(A) 21} only then could my covenant with my servant David be broken, so that he would not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with my ministers the Levites.^{(B) 22} Just as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will increase the offspring of my servant David and the Levites who minister to me.^(C)

²³ The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁴ Have you not observed how these people say, “The two families that the Lord chose have been rejected by him,” and how they hold my people in such contempt that they no longer regard them as a nation?^{(D) 25} Thus says the Lord: Only if I had not established my covenant with day and night and the ordinances of heaven and earth^{(E) 26} would I reject the offspring of Jacob and of my servant David and not choose any of his descendants as rulers over the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy upon them.^(F)

²¹ “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest.^(A)

⁶ For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.