⁴ If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”

¹⁷ “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸ I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned^(A) against heaven and against you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’

¹⁶ “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast^(A) for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”^(B)

¹⁴ Like water^(A) spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die.^(B) But that is not what God desires; rather, he devises ways so that a banished person^(C) does not remain banished from him.

²⁷ Just as people are destined to die once,^(A) and after that to face judgment,^(B)

¹³ But when he reached the Benjamin Gate,^(A) the captain of the guard, whose name was Irijah son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, arrested him and said, “You are deserting to the Babylonians!”^(B)

¹⁴ “That’s not true!” Jeremiah said. “I am not deserting to the Babylonians.” But Irijah would not listen to him; instead, he arrested^(C) Jeremiah and brought him to the officials.