¹² But Zedekiah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and he refused to humble himself when the prophet Jeremiah spoke to him directly from the Lord.

²³ But unlike his father, he did not humble himself before the Lord. Instead, Amon sinned even more.

Zedekiah Questions Jeremiah

¹⁴ One day King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah and had him brought to the third entrance of the Lord’s Temple. “I want to ask you something,” the king said. “And don’t try to hide the truth.”

¹⁵ Jeremiah said, “If I tell you the truth, you will kill me. And if I give you advice, you won’t listen to me anyway.”

¹⁶ So King Zedekiah secretly promised him, “As surely as the Lord our Creator lives, I will not kill you or hand you over to the men who want you dead.”

¹⁷ Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “This is what the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you surrender to the Babylonian officers, you and your family will live, and the city will not be burned down. ¹⁸ But if you refuse to surrender, you will not escape! This city will be handed over to the Babylonians, and they will burn it to the ground.’”

¹⁹ “But I am afraid to surrender,” the king said, “for the Babylonians may hand me over to the Judeans who have defected to them. And who knows what they will do to me!”

²⁰ Jeremiah replied, “You won’t be handed over to them if you choose to obey the Lord. Your life will be spared, and all will go well for you. ²¹ But if you refuse to surrender, this is what the Lord has revealed to me: ²² All the women left in your palace will be brought out and given to the officers of the Babylonian army. Then the women will taunt you, saying,

²³ All your wives and children will be led out to the Babylonians, and you will not escape. You will be seized by the king of Babylon, and this city will be burned down.”

²⁴ Then Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “Don’t tell anyone you told me this, or you will die! ²⁵ My officials may hear that I spoke to you, and they may say, ‘Tell us what you and the king were talking about. If you don’t tell us, we will kill you.’ ²⁶ If this happens, just tell them you begged me not to send you back to Jonathan’s dungeon, for fear you would die there.”

²⁷ Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the king’s officials came to Jeremiah and asked him why the king had called for him. But Jeremiah followed the king’s instructions, and they left without finding out the truth. No one had overheard the conversation between Jeremiah and the king. ²⁸ And Jeremiah remained a prisoner in the courtyard of the guard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

² But neither King Zedekiah nor his attendants nor the people who were left in the land listened to what the Lord said through Jeremiah.

³ Nevertheless, King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the priest, son of Maaseiah, to ask Jeremiah, “Please pray to the Lord our God for us.” ⁴ Jeremiah had not yet been imprisoned, so he could come and go among the people as he pleased.

⁵ At this time the army of Pharaoh Hophra^[a] of Egypt appeared at the southern border of Judah. When the Babylonian^[b] army heard about it, they withdrew from their siege of Jerusalem.

⁶ Then the Lord gave this message to Jeremiah: ⁷ “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: The king of Judah sent you to ask me what is going to happen. Tell him, ‘Pharaoh’s army is about to return to Egypt, though he came here to help you. ⁸ Then the Babylonians^[c] will come back and capture this city and burn it to the ground.’

⁹ “This is what the Lord says: Do not fool yourselves into thinking that the Babylonians are gone for good. They aren’t! ¹⁰ Even if you were to destroy the entire Babylonian army, leaving only a handful of wounded survivors, they would still stagger from their tents and burn this city to the ground!”

Jeremiah Is Imprisoned

¹¹ When the Babylonian army left Jerusalem because of Pharaoh’s approaching army, ¹² Jeremiah started to leave the city on his way to the territory of Benjamin, to claim his share of the property among his relatives there.^{[d] 13} But as he was walking through the Benjamin Gate, a sentry arrested him and said, “You are defecting to the Babylonians!” The sentry making the arrest was Irijah son of Shelemiah, grandson of Hananiah.

¹⁴ “That’s not true!” Jeremiah protested. “I had no intention of doing any such thing.” But Irijah wouldn’t listen, and he took Jeremiah before the officials. ¹⁵ They were furious with Jeremiah and had him flogged and imprisoned in the house of Jonathan the secretary. Jonathan’s house had been converted into a prison. ¹⁶ Jeremiah was put into a dungeon cell, where he remained for many days.

¹⁷ Later King Zedekiah secretly requested that Jeremiah come to the palace, where the king asked him, “Do you have any messages from the Lord?”

“Yes, I do!” said Jeremiah. “You will be defeated by the king of Babylon.”

¹⁸ Then Jeremiah asked the king, “What crime have I committed? What have I done against you, your attendants, or the people that I should be imprisoned like this? ¹⁹ Where are your prophets now who told you the king of Babylon would not attack you or this land? ²⁰ Listen, my lord the king, I beg you. Don’t send me back to the dungeon in the house of Jonathan the secretary, for I will die there.”

²¹ So King Zedekiah commanded that Jeremiah not be returned to the dungeon. Instead, he was imprisoned in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace. The king also commanded that Jeremiah be given a loaf of fresh bread every day as long as there was any left in the city. So Jeremiah was put in the palace prison.

⁶ So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.

¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

²² “You are his successor,^[a] O Belshazzar, and you knew all this, yet you have not humbled yourself. ²³ For you have proudly defied the Lord of heaven and have had these cups from his Temple brought before you. You and your nobles and your wives and concubines have been drinking wine from them while praising gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor know anything at all. But you have not honored the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny!

² “Go to King Zedekiah of Judah, and tell him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am about to hand this city over to the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down. ³ You will not escape his grasp but will be captured and taken to meet the king of Babylon face to face. Then you will be exiled to Babylon.

⁴ “‘But listen to this promise from the Lord, O Zedekiah, king of Judah. This is what the Lord says: You will not be killed in war ⁵ but will die peacefully. People will burn incense in your memory, just as they did for your ancestors, the kings who preceded you. They will mourn for you, crying, “Alas, our master is dead!” This I have decreed, says the Lord.’”

⁶ So Jeremiah the prophet delivered the message to King Zedekiah of Judah. ⁷ At this time the Babylonian army was besieging Jerusalem, Lachish, and Azekah—the only fortified cities of Judah not yet captured.

Freedom for Hebrew Slaves

⁸ This message came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah made a covenant with the people, proclaiming freedom for the slaves. ⁹ He had ordered all the people to free their Hebrew slaves—both men and women. No one was to keep a fellow Judean in bondage. ¹⁰ The officials and all the people had obeyed the king’s command, ¹¹ but later they changed their minds. They took back the men and women they had freed, forcing them to be slaves again.

¹² So the Lord gave them this message through Jeremiah: ¹³ “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your ancestors long ago when I rescued them from their slavery in Egypt. ¹⁴ I told them that every Hebrew slave must be freed after serving six years. But your ancestors paid no attention to me. ¹⁵ Recently you repented and did what was right, following my command. You freed your slaves and made a solemn covenant with me in the Temple that bears my name. ¹⁶ But now you have shrugged off your oath and defiled my name by taking back the men and women you had freed, forcing them to be slaves once again.

¹⁷ “Therefore, this is what the Lord says: Since you have not obeyed me by setting your countrymen free, I will set you free to be destroyed by war, disease, and famine. You will be an object of horror to all the nations of the earth. ¹⁸ Because you have broken the terms of our covenant, I will cut you apart just as you cut apart the calf when you walked between its halves to solemnize your vows. ¹⁹ Yes, I will cut you apart, whether you are officials of Judah or Jerusalem, court officials, priests, or common people—for you have broken your oath. ²⁰ I will give you to your enemies, and they will kill you. Your bodies will be food for the vultures and wild animals.

²¹ “I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials to the army of the king of Babylon. And although they have left Jerusalem for a while, ²² I will call the Babylonian armies back again. They will fight against this city and will capture it and burn it down. I will see to it that all the towns of Judah are destroyed, with no one living there.”

¹² Then I repeated this same message to King Zedekiah of Judah. “If you want to live, submit to the yoke of the king of Babylon and his people. ¹³ Why do you insist on dying—you and your people? Why should you choose war, famine, and disease, which the Lord will bring against every nation that refuses to submit to Babylon’s king? ¹⁴ Do not listen to the false prophets who keep telling you, ‘The king of Babylon will not conquer you.’ They are liars. ¹⁵ This is what the Lord says: ‘I have not sent these prophets! They are telling you lies in my name, so I will drive you from this land. You will all die—you and all these prophets, too.’”

¹⁶ Then I spoke to the priests and the people and said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not listen to your prophets who claim that soon the gold articles taken from my Temple will be returned from Babylon. It is all a lie! ¹⁷ Do not listen to them. Surrender to the king of Babylon, and you will live. Why should this whole city be destroyed? ¹⁸ If they really are prophets and speak the Lord’s messages, let them pray to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Let them pray that the articles remaining in the Lord’s Temple and in the king’s palace and in the palaces of Jerusalem will not be carried away to Babylon!’

¹⁹ “For the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has spoken about the pillars in front of the Temple, the great bronze basin called the Sea, the water carts, and all the other ceremonial articles. ²⁰ King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon left them here when he exiled Jehoiachin^[a] son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, to Babylon, along with all the other nobles of Judah and Jerusalem. ²¹ Yes, this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says about the precious things still in the Temple, in the palace of Judah’s king, and in Jerusalem: ²² ‘They will all be carried away to Babylon and will stay there until I send for them,’ says the Lord. ‘Then I will bring them back to Jerusalem again.’”

Jeremiah Condemns Hananiah

28 One day in late summer^[b] of that same year—the fourth year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah—Hananiah son of Azzur, a prophet from Gibeon, addressed me publicly in the Temple while all the priests and people listened. He said, ² “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will remove the yoke of the king of Babylon from your necks. ³ Within two years I will bring back all the Temple treasures that King Nebuchadnezzar carried off to Babylon. ⁴ And I will bring back Jehoiachin^[c] son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the other captives that were taken to Babylon. I will surely break the yoke that the king of Babylon has put on your necks. I, the Lord, have spoken!’”

⁵ Jeremiah responded to Hananiah as they stood in front of all the priests and people at the Temple. ⁶ He said, “Amen! May your prophecies come true! I hope the Lord does everything you say. I hope he does bring back from Babylon the treasures of this Temple and all the captives. ⁷ But listen now to the solemn words I speak to you in the presence of all these people. ⁸ The ancient prophets who preceded you and me spoke against many nations, always warning of war, disaster, and disease. ⁹ So a prophet who predicts peace must show he is right. Only when his predictions come true can we know that he is really from the Lord.”

¹⁰ Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke off Jeremiah’s neck and broke it in pieces. ¹¹ And Hananiah said again to the crowd that had gathered, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Just as this yoke has been broken, within two years I will break the yoke of oppression from all the nations now subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.’” With that, Jeremiah left the Temple area.

¹² Soon after this confrontation with Hananiah, the Lord gave this message to Jeremiah: ¹³ “Go and tell Hananiah, ‘This is what the Lord says: You have broken a wooden yoke, but you have replaced it with a yoke of iron. ¹⁴ The Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: I have put a yoke of iron on the necks of all these nations, forcing them into slavery under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have put everything, even the wild animals, under his control.’”

¹⁵ Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, but the people believe your lies. ¹⁶ Therefore, this is what the Lord says: ‘You must die. Your life will end this very year because you have rebelled against the Lord.’”

¹⁷ Two months later^[d] the prophet Hananiah died.