This is what the Lord said to me: “Make a yoke out of straps and crossbars and put it on your neck. … They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. … Then the prophet Hananiah took the yoke off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah and broke it. … His yoke will be taken from my people, and his burden removed from their shoulders. … You have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. … In that day their burden will be lifted from your shoulders, their yoke from your neck.

“In that day,” declares the Lord Almighty, “I will break the yoke off their necks and will tear off their bonds; no longer will foreigners enslave them. … Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away. … They will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. … I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high. … This the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. … In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.

Je 2:20; Je 27:2, Mt 23:4, Je 28:10, Is 14:25, Is 9:4, Is 10:27; Je 30:8, Na 1:13, Ez 34:27, Le 26:13, Is 58:6; Mt 11:30, 1Jh 5:3

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