Jeremiah 36-38

Common English Bible

Enduring word of God

36 In the fourth year of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² Take a scroll and write in it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations from the time of Josiah until today. ³ Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I intend to bring upon them, they will turn from their evil ways, and I will forgive their wrongdoing and sins. ⁴ So Jeremiah sent for Baruch, Neriah’s son. As Jeremiah dictated all the words that the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them in the scroll. ⁵ Then Jeremiah told Baruch, “I’m confined here and can’t go to the Lord’s temple. ⁶ So you go to the temple on the next day of fasting, and read the Lord’s words from the scroll that I have dictated to you. Read them so that all the people in the temple can hear them, as well as all the Judeans who have come from their towns. ⁷ If they turn from their evil ways, perhaps the Lord will hear their prayers. The Lord has threatened them with fierce anger.” ⁸ Baruch, Neriah’s son, did everything the prophet Jeremiah instructed him: he read all the Lord’s words from the scroll in the temple.

⁹ In the ninth month of the fifth year of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, all the people in Jerusalem and all those who had come from Judean towns observed a fast for the Lord in Jerusalem. ¹⁰ Then Baruch read Jeremiah’s words from the scroll to all the people in the Lord’s temple; he read them in the chamber of Gemariah, Shaphan the scribe’s son, in the upper courtyard near the entrance of the New Gate of the Lord’s temple. ¹¹ When Micaiah, Gemariah’s son and Shaphan’s grandson, heard all the Lord’s words from the scroll, ¹² he went down to the scribes’ chamber in the royal palace. There he found all the officials meeting together: Elishama the scribe; Delaiah, Shemaiah’s son; Elnathan, Achbor’s son; Gemariah, Shaphan’s son; Zedekiah, Hananiah’s son, and all the other officials. ¹³ Micaiah told them all the words he heard Baruch read from the scroll before the people.

¹⁴ Then all the officials sent Jehudi, Nethaniah’s son and Shelemiah’s grandson, and Cushi’s great-grandson, to Baruch: “Take the scroll you read to the people and come with me.”

So Baruch, Neriah’s son, took the scroll and went to the officials. ¹⁵ They said to him, “Sit down and read it to us.” So Baruch read it to them. ¹⁶ When they heard all its words, they were alarmed and said to Baruch: “We must at once report all this to the king!” ¹⁷ Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us, how did you write all these words? Did they come from Jeremiah?”

¹⁸ Baruch replied, “He dictated all the words to me, and I wrote them with ink in the scroll.”

¹⁹ The officials then said to Baruch, “You and Jeremiah had better go and hide. And don’t let anyone know where you are.”

²⁰ After leaving the scroll in the room of Elishama the scribe, they went to the king’s court and told him everything. ²¹ The king sent Jehudi to take the scroll, and he retrieved it from the room of Elishama the scribe. Then Jehudi read it to the king and all his royal officials who were standing next to the king. ²² Now it was the ninth month,^[a] and the king was staying in the winterized part of the palace with the firepot burning near him. ²³ And whenever Jehudi read three or four columns of the scroll, the king would cut them off with a scribe’s knife and throw them into the firepot until the whole scroll was burned up. ²⁴ Neither the king nor any of his attendants who heard all these words were alarmed or tore their clothes. ²⁵ Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, but he wouldn’t listen to them.

²⁶ The king commanded Jerahmeel, the king’s son, along with Seraiah, Azriel’s son, and Shelemiah, Abdeel’s son, to arrest the scribe Baruch and the prophet Jeremiah. But the Lord hid them.

²⁷ The Lord’s word came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll containing the words written by Baruch at Jeremiah’s dictation: ²⁸ Get another scroll and write in it all the words that were in the first scroll that Judah’s King Jehoiakim burned. ²⁹ Then say to Judah’s King Jehoiakim: The Lord proclaims: You burned that scroll because it declared that the king of Babylon will come and destroy this land and eliminate every sign of life from it. ³⁰ Therefore, this is what the Lord proclaims about Judah’s King Jehoiakim: He won’t have any heirs to occupy the throne of David, and his dead body will be cast out and exposed to the heat of the day and the frost of the night. ³¹ I will punish him and his family and his attendants for their wrongdoing. I will bring upon them, as well as the residents of Jerusalem and the people of Judah, every disaster I pronounced against them. But they wouldn’t listen.

³² So Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch, Neriah’s son, who wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words in the scroll burned in the fire by Judah’s King Jehoiakim. Many similar words were added to them.

Jeremiah falsely accused and imprisoned

37 Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah, Josiah’s son, to succeed Coniah, Jehoiakim’s son, as king of Judah. ² Neither Zedekiah, his attendants, nor the people of the land listened to the Lord’s words spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.

³ Nevertheless, King Zedekiah sent Jehucal, Shelemiah’s son, and the priest Zephaniah, Maaseiah’s son, to Jeremiah the prophet with this plea: “Please pray for us to the Lord our God.” (⁴ Now Jeremiah hadn’t been imprisoned yet, so he was free to come and go among the people. ⁵ Pharaoh’s army had recently^[b] set out from Egypt; when the Babylonians who were attacking Jerusalem learned of the Egyptian advance, they withdrew from Jerusalem.)

⁶ Then the Lord’s word came to Jeremiah the prophet: ⁷ The Lord, the God of Israel, proclaims: Tell the king of Judah who sent his emissaries to seek advice from me: “Pharaoh’s army that came to assist you is heading back to Egypt. ⁸ The Babylonians will return and attack this city. They will capture it and burn it down.”

⁹ The Lord proclaims: Don’t let yourself be deceived into thinking that the Babylonians will withdraw for good.^[c] They won’t! ¹⁰ Even if you were to crush the entire Babylonian army that’s attacking you and only the wounded in their tents remained, they would rise up and burn this city down.

¹¹ Now when the Babylonian army had withdrawn from Jerusalem due to Pharaoh’s advance, ¹² Jeremiah set out for the land of Benjamin to secure his share of the family property.^{[d] 13} He got as far as the Benjamin Gate in Jerusalem when the guard there named Irijah, Shelemiah’s son and Hananiah’s grandson, arrested the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “You are deserting to the Babylonians.”

¹⁴ “That’s a lie,” Jeremiah replied. “I’m not deserting to the Babylonians.” But Irijah wouldn’t listen to him. He arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials, ¹⁵ who were furious with him. They beat him and threw him into the house of the scribe Jonathan, which had been turned into a prison. ¹⁶ So Jeremiah was put in a cistern, which was like a dungeon, where he remained a long time.

¹⁷ Later King Zedekiah sent for him and questioned Jeremiah secretly in the palace: “Is there a word from the Lord?”

“There is,” Jeremiah replied. “You are going to be handed over to the king of Babylon.” ¹⁸ Then Jeremiah asked King Zedekiah, “What have I done wrong to you or your attendants or this people that you should throw me into prison? ¹⁹ Where are your prophets now who prophesied that the king of Babylon wouldn’t attack you and this land? ²⁰ Now, my master and king, I beg you, don’t send me back to the house of Jonathan the scribe, or I’ll die there.” ²¹ So King Zedekiah gave orders that Jeremiah be held in the prison quarters and that he receive a loaf of bread daily from the street vendors^[e]—until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the prison quarters.

38 Shephatiah, Mattan’s son; Gedaliah, Pashhur’s son; Jucal, Shelemiah’s son; and Pashhur, Malchiah’s son heard what Jeremiah had been telling the people: ² The Lord proclaims: Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine, and disease. But whoever surrenders to the Babylonians will live; yes, their lives will be spared. ³ The Lord proclaims: This city will certainly be handed over to the army of Babylon’s king, who will capture it.

⁴ Then the officials said to the king: “This man must be put to death! By saying such things, he is discouraging the few remaining troops left in the city, as well as all the people. This man doesn’t seek their welfare but their ruin!”

⁵ “He’s in your hands,” King Zedekiah said, “for the king can do nothing to stop you.” ⁶ So they seized Jeremiah, threw him into the cistern of the royal prince Malchiah, within the prison quarters, and lowered him down by ropes. Now there wasn’t any water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah began to sink into the mud.

⁷ Ebed-melech the Cushite, a court official in the royal palace, got word that they had thrown Jeremiah into the cistern. Since the king was sitting at the Benjamin Gate, ⁸ Ebed-melech left the palace and said to the king: ⁹ “My master the king, these men have made a terrible mistake in treating the prophet Jeremiah the way they have; they have thrown him into the cistern where he will die of starvation, for there’s no bread left in the city.”

¹⁰ Then the king commanded Ebed-melech the Cushite, “Take thirty men from here and take Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.” ¹¹ So Ebed-melech took the men and returned to the palace, to an underground supply room, where he found some old rags and scraps of clothing.

Ebed-melech lowered them down the cistern by the ropes ¹² and called to Jeremiah, “Put these old rags and scraps of clothing under your arms and hold on to the ropes.” When Jeremiah did this, ¹³ they pulled him up by the ropes and got him out of the cistern. After that Jeremiah remained in the prison quarters.

¹⁴ King Zedekiah ordered that the prophet Jeremiah be brought to him at the third entrance of the Lord’s temple, where the king said to Jeremiah, “I want to ask you something, and don’t hide anything from me.”

¹⁵ Jeremiah replied, “If I do, you’ll kill me! And if I tell you what to do, you won’t listen to me!”

¹⁶ So King Zedekiah swore to Jeremiah behind closed doors, “As the Lord lives, who has given us this life, I won’t put you to death and I won’t hand you over to those who seek to kill you.”

¹⁷ So Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: “The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, you and your family will live, and this city will not be burned down. ¹⁸ If you don’t surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, the city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will burn it down, and you won’t escape from them.”

¹⁹ King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I’m afraid that I will fall into the hands of the Judeans who have defected to the Babylonians, and they will torture me.”

²⁰ “That won’t happen,” Jeremiah replied, “if you obey the Lord, whose message I bring. You will survive, and all will go well for you. ²¹ But if you refuse to surrender, this is what the Lord has shown me: ²² All the women left in the palace of the king of Judah will be led out to the officers of the king of Babylon. And they will say:

²³ “All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you yourself won’t escape from them. The king of Babylon will capture you, and this city will be burned down.”

²⁴ Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “No one is to know about these matters or else you will die. ²⁵ If the officials find out that we met, and they come and say to you, ‘Tell us what you said to the king. Don’t hide anything from us; otherwise, we’ll kill you. So what did the king say to you?’ ²⁶ you should say to them, ‘I was begging the king not to send me back to the house of Jonathan to die there.’”

²⁷ Then all the officials approached Jeremiah to question him. And he responded exactly as the king had instructed him. So they stopped interrogating him because the conversation between the king and Jeremiah^[f] hadn’t been overheard. ²⁸ Jeremiah remained in the prison quarters until Jerusalem was captured.