3 Therefore, when [the suspense of separation and our yearning for some personal communication from you] became intolerable, we consented to being left behind alone at Athens.

² And we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s servant in [spreading] the good news (the Gospel) of Christ, to strengthen and establish and to exhort and comfort and encourage you in your faith,

³ That no one [of you] should be disturbed and beguiled and led astray by these afflictions and difficulties [to which I have referred]. For you yourselves know that this is [unavoidable in our position, and must be recognized as] our appointed lot.

⁴ For even when we were with you, [you know] we warned you plainly beforehand that we were to be pressed with difficulties and made to suffer affliction, just as to your own knowledge it has [since] happened.

⁵ That is the reason that, when I could bear [the suspense] no longer, I sent that I might learn [how you were standing the strain, and the endurance of] your faith, [for I was fearful] lest somehow the tempter had tempted you and our toil [among you should prove to] be fruitless and to no purpose.

⁶ But now that Timothy has just come back to us from [his visit to] you and has brought us the good news of [the steadfastness of] your faith and [the warmth of your] love, and [reported] how kindly you cherish a constant and affectionate remembrance of us [and that you are] longing to see us as we [are to see] you,

⁷ Brethren, for this reason, in [spite of all] our stress and crushing difficulties we have been filled with comfort and cheer about you [because of] your faith (^[a]the leaning of your whole personality on God in complete trust and confidence).

⁸ Because now we [really] live, if you stand [firm] in the Lord.

⁹ For what [adequate] thanksgiving can we render to God for you for all the gladness and delight which we enjoy for your sakes before our God?

¹⁰ [And we] continue to pray especially and with most intense earnestness night and day that we may see you face to face and mend and make good whatever may be imperfect and lacking in your faith.

¹¹ Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) guide our steps to you.

¹² And may the Lord make you to increase and excel and overflow in love for one another and for all people, just as we also do for you,

¹³ So that He may strengthen and confirm and establish your hearts faultlessly pure and unblamable in holiness in the sight of our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) with all His saints (the ^[b]holy and glorified people of God)! Amen, (so be it)!

19 Thus says the Lord: Go and get a potter’s earthen bottle, and take some of the old people and some of the elderly priests

² And go out to the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], which is by the entrance of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I shall tell you,

³ And say, Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am going to bring such evil upon this place that the ears of whoever hears of it will tingle.

⁴ Because the people have forsaken Me and have estranged and profaned this place [Jerusalem] by burning incense in it to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents

⁵ And have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not nor spoke of it, nor did it come into My mind and heart—

⁶ Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom [son of Hinnom], but the Valley of Slaughter.^(A)

⁷ And I will pour out and make void the counsel and the plans of [the men of] Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives, and their dead bodies I will give to be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.

⁸ And I will make this city an astonishment and a horror and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss [in scorn] because of all its plagues and disasters.

⁹ And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they shall eat each one the flesh of his neighbor and friend in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their lives distress them.

¹⁰ Then you shall break the bottle in the sight of the men who accompany you,

¹¹ And say to them, Thus said the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it cannot be mended. Men will bury in Topheth because there will be no other place for burial and until there is no more room to bury.

¹² Thus will I do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants; and I will even make this city like Topheth.

¹³ And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, shall be like the place of Topheth—even all the houses upon whose roofs incense has been burned to all the host of the heavens and drink offerings have been poured out to other gods.^(B)

¹⁴ Then came Jeremiah from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the Lord’s house and said to all the people,

¹⁵ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks, refusing to hear My words.

20 Now Pashhur son of Immer, the priest, who was [also] chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things.

² Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were at the upper Benjamin Gate by the house of the Lord.^(C)

³ And the next day Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, The Lord does not call your name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib [terror on every side].

⁴ For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; they will fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he will carry them captive to Babylon and will slay them with the sword.

⁵ Moreover, I will deliver all the riches of this city—all the results of its labors, all its precious things, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah—into the hand of their enemies, who will make them a prey and plunder them and seize them and carry them to Babylon.

⁶ And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity; you shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied falsely.

⁷ [But Jeremiah said] O Lord, You have persuaded and deceived me, and I was persuaded and deceived; You are stronger than I am and You have prevailed. I am a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.

⁸ For whenever I speak, I must cry out and complain; I shout, Violence and destruction! For the word of the Lord has become to me a reproach and a derision and has brought me insult all day long.

⁹ If I say, I will not make mention of [the Lord] or speak any more in His name, in my mind and heart it is as if there were a burning fire shut up in my bones. And I am weary of enduring and holding it in; I cannot [contain it any longer].

¹⁰ For I have heard many whispering and defaming, [There is] terror on every side! Denounce him! Let us denounce him! Say all my familiar friends, they who watch for my fall, Perhaps he will be persuaded and deceived; then we will prevail against him, and we will get our revenge on him.

¹¹ But the Lord is with me as a mighty and terrible One; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not overcome [me]. They will be utterly put to shame, for they will not deal wisely or prosper [in their schemes]; their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten.

¹² But, O Lord of hosts, You Who try the righteous, Who see the heart and the mind, let me see Your vengeance on them, for to You have I revealed and committed my cause.

¹³ Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For He has delivered the life of the poor and needy from the hands of evildoers.

¹⁴ Cursed be the day on which I was born! Let not the day on which my mother bore me be blessed!

¹⁵ Cursed be the man who brought the tidings to my father, saying, A son is born to you!—making him very glad.

¹⁶ And let that man be like the cities which the Lord overthrew, and did not relent. Let him hear the [war] cry in the morning and the shouting of alarm at noon,

¹⁷ Because he did not slay me in the womb, so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb always great.

¹⁸ Why did I come out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed in shame?