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.”

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^[a] hadn’t been overheard.