Jeremiah 44:1-14

Evangelical Heritage Version

² This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says. You have seen the disaster I brought on Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah. You see that today they are desolate and no one lives there ³ because they committed evil and provoked me to anger. They burned incense to serve other gods that neither they, nor you, nor your fathers knew. ⁴ I kept sending my servants the prophets to you again and again, saying, “Do not do this detestable thing that I hate.” ⁵ But they did not listen or pay attention. They did not turn away from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods. ⁶ Therefore, my wrath and anger were poured out and ignited against the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, and they were laid waste and desolate, as they are this day.

⁷ Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, says. Why are you doing such an evil thing to yourselves? You are cutting off from Judah man and woman, children and infants, leaving no one remaining. ⁸ Why are you provoking me to anger with the idols your hands have made? Why are you burning incense to other gods in Egypt where you have gone to live? You will cut yourselves off, making yourselves an object of cursing and ridicule among all the nations of the earth. ⁹ Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the king of Judah, the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁰ They have not humbled themselves even to this day. They have not feared me or walked in my law or in my statutes that I set before you and your fathers.

¹¹ Therefore the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: I will certainly set my face against you to bring disaster, to cut off all Judah. ¹² I will remove the survivors of Judah who are determined to go to Egypt and settle there, and they will be consumed. In the land of Egypt they will fall. They will be consumed by sword and famine. They will die, from the least to the greatest, by sword and famine. They will become an object of horror and derision, an object of cursing and ridicule. ¹³ I will punish those who go to live in the land of Egypt as I punished Jerusalem—with the sword, famine, and plague— ¹⁴ so that none of the survivors of Judah who have gone to live in Egypt will escape or survive to return to the land of Judah, to which they long to return in order to live there, because none of them will return, except a few refugees.