You shall not take you a wife, neither shall you have sons or daughters in this place.
Read Chapter 16
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Place. It was going to be destroyed, and the cares of a family might interrupt the prophet. The Fathers believe that Jeremias never married, (see St. Jerome in chap. xxiii. Isidor.) which was then a rare example. (Calmet)
He always lived a single life, and not only in time of tribulation. (St. Jerome, contra Jov. 1.) (Worthington)
The Church enforces this law of God for her sacred ministers, in sub deacons and the higher orders. St. Paul shows the propriety of such a regulation, (1 Corinthians vii.) which innovators deem unnatural and tyrannical. How then could God enforce it once? With his grace we may observe celibacy like Jeremias. (Haydock)
Elijah lived a virgin life; so also did Elisha and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah the command came: “You will not take a wife.” He had been sanctified in his mother’s womb, and now he was forbidden to take a wife because the captivity was near. The apostle gives the same counsel in different words: “I think, therefore, that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a person to be as he is.” What is this distress that does away with the joys of wedlock? The apostle tells us, in a later verse: “The time is short. It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.” - "Letter 22.21"
