Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 16:2

"Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters, in this place." — Jeremiah 16:2 (ASV)

Thou shalt not take thee a wife ... —The words came to an Israelite and to a priest with a force which we can hardly understand.

With them marriage, and the hopes which it involved, was not only a happiness but a duty, and to be cut off from it was to renounce both, because the evil that was coming on the nation was such as to turn both into a curse. We may compare our Lord’s words in Matthew 24:19 and those spoken to the daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:29), and what, in part at least, entered into St. Paul’s motives for a similar abstinence on account of the present distress (1 Corinthians 7:26).