Jeremiah 42-45

Easy-to-Read Version

42 While they were at Geruth Kimham, Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah went to Jeremiah the prophet. All the army officers went with Johanan and Jezaniah. All the people, from the least important to the most important, went to Jeremiah. ² They said to him, “Jeremiah, please listen to what we ask. Pray to the Lord your God for all those who are survivors from the family of Judah. Jeremiah, you can see that there are not many of us left. At one time there were many of us. ³ Jeremiah, pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

⁴ Then Jeremiah the prophet answered, “I understand what you want me to do. I will pray to the Lord your God, as you asked me to do. I will tell you everything the Lord says. I will not hide anything from you.”

⁵ Then the people said to Jeremiah, “If we don’t do everything the Lord your God tells us, then we hope the Lord will be a true and faithful witness against us. We know he will send you to tell us what to do. ⁶ It doesn’t matter if we like the message or if we don’t like the message. We will obey the Lord our God. We are sending you to the Lord for a message from him. We will obey what he says. Then good things will happen to us. Yes, we will obey the Lord our God.”

⁷ At the end of ten days, the message from the Lord came to Jeremiah. ⁸ Then Jeremiah called together Johanan son of Kareah and the army officers who were with him. He also called all the other people together, from the least important to the most important. ⁹ Then Jeremiah said to them, “You sent me to the Lord, the God of Israel, and I asked him what you wanted me to ask. This is what he says: ¹⁰ ‘If you will stay in Judah, I will make you strong—I will not destroy you. I will plant you, and I will not pull you up. I will do this because I am sad about the terrible things that I made happen to you. ¹¹ Now you are afraid of the king of Babylon. But don’t be afraid of him. Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon,’ says the Lord, ‘because I am with you. I will save you. I will rescue you. He will not get his hands on you. ¹² I will be kind to you, and the king of Babylon will also treat you with mercy. He will bring you back to your land.’ ¹³ But you might say, ‘We will not stay in Judah.’ If you say that, you will disobey the Lord your God. ¹⁴ And you might say, ‘No, we will go and live in Egypt. We will not be bothered with war there. We will not hear the trumpets of war, and in Egypt we will not be hungry.’ ¹⁵ If you say that, listen to this message from the Lord, you survivors from Judah. This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of the people of Israel, says: ‘If you decide to go and live in Egypt, this will happen: ¹⁶ You are afraid of the sword of war, but it will defeat you there. And you are worried about hunger, but you will be hungry in Egypt. You will die there. ¹⁷ Everyone who decides to go live in Egypt will die by war, hunger, or disease. Not one person who goes to Egypt will survive. Not one of them will escape the terrible things that I will bring to them.’

¹⁸ “This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of the people of Israel, says: ‘I showed my anger against Jerusalem. I punished the people who lived there. In the same way I will show my anger against everyone who goes to Egypt. People will use you as an example when they ask for bad things to happen to other people. You will become like a curse word. People will be ashamed of you, and they will insult you. And you will never see Judah again.’

¹⁹ “Survivors of Judah, the Lord told you: ‘Don’t go to Egypt.’ I warn you right now, ²⁰ you are making a mistake that will cause your deaths. You sent me to the Lord your God. You said to me, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us. Tell us everything the Lord our God says to do. We will obey him.’ ²¹ So today I have told you the message from the Lord. But you have not obeyed the Lord your God. You have not done all that he sent me to tell you to do. ²² So now be sure you understand this: You want to go live in Egypt. But these things will happen to you in Egypt: You will die by a sword, or hunger, or terrible sickness.”

43 So Jeremiah finished telling the people the message from the Lord their God. He told them everything that the Lord their God had sent him to tell them.

² Azariah son of Hoshaiah, Johanan son of Kareah, and some other men were proud and stubborn. They became angry with Jeremiah. They said to him, “Jeremiah, you are lying! The Lord our God didn’t send you to say to us, ‘You must not go to Egypt to live there.’ ³ Jeremiah, we think that Baruch son of Neriah is encouraging you to be against us. He wants you to give us to the Babylonians. He wants you to do this so they can kill us. Or he wants you to do this so that they can make us captives and take us to Babylon.”

⁴ So Johanan, the army officers, and all the people disobeyed the Lord’s command. The Lord had commanded them to stay in Judah. ⁵ But Johanan, son of Kareah, and the army officers did not obey this command. Instead, they took the survivors from Judah to Egypt. In the past the enemy had taken the survivors to other countries, but they had come back to Judah. ⁶ Now Johanan and all the army officers took all the men, women, and children and led them to Egypt. Among those people were the king’s daughters. (Nebuzaradan had put Gedaliah in charge of those people. Nebuzaradan was the commander of the king of Babylon’s special guards.) Johanan also took Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah. ⁷ These people didn’t listen to the Lord. So they all went to Egypt to the town of Tahpanhes.^[a]

⁸ In the town of Tahpanhes, Jeremiah received this message from the Lord: ⁹ “Jeremiah, get some large stones. Take them and bury them in the clay and brick sidewalk in front of Pharaoh’s official building in Tahpanhes. Do this while the people of Judah are watching you. ¹⁰ Then say to those who are watching you: ‘This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: I will send for King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to come here. He is my servant, and I will set his throne over these stones I have buried here. Nebuchadnezzar will spread his canopy^[b] above these stones. ¹¹ He will come here and attack Egypt. He will bring death to those who are to die. He will bring captivity to those who are to be taken captive. And he will bring the sword to those who are to be killed with a sword. ¹² Nebuchadnezzar will start a fire in the temples of the false gods of Egypt. He will burn the temples and he will take the idols away. Shepherds pick the bugs and thorns off their clothes to make them clean. In the same way Nebuchadnezzar will pick Egypt clean. Then he will safely leave Egypt. ¹³ He will destroy the memorial stones that are in the temple of the Sun God^[c] in Egypt, and he will burn down the temples of the false gods of Egypt.’”

The Lord Warns the People of Judah

44 Jeremiah received a message from the Lord for all the people of Judah living in Egypt. The message was for the people of Judah living in the towns of Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and southern Egypt. This was the message: ² “This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘You people saw the disasters that I brought on the city of Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. The towns are empty piles of stones today. ³ They were destroyed because the people living in them did evil. They gave sacrifices to other gods, and that made me angry! Your people and your ancestors did not worship those gods in the past. ⁴ I sent my servants, the prophets, to those people again and again. They spoke my message and said to the people, “Don’t do this terrible thing. I hate for you to worship idols.” ⁵ But they didn’t listen to the prophets or pay attention to them. They didn’t stop doing wicked things. They didn’t stop making sacrifices to other gods. ⁶ So I showed my anger against them. I punished the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. My anger made Jerusalem and the towns of Judah the empty piles of stone they are today.’

⁷ “So this is what the Lord God All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘Why are you hurting yourselves by continuing to worship idols? You are separating the men and women, the children and babies from the family of Judah. And so you leave yourselves without anyone left from the family of Judah. ⁸ Why do you people want to make me angry by making idols? Now you are living in Egypt. And now you are making me angry by offering sacrifices to the false gods of Egypt. You will destroy yourselves, and it will be your own fault. The people of all the other nations on the earth will say bad things about you and make fun of you. ⁹ Have you forgotten about the wicked things your ancestors did? And have you forgotten about the wicked things the kings and queens of Judah did? Have you forgotten about the wicked things you and your wives did in Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁰ Even to this day the people of Judah have not made themselves humble. They have not shown any respect for me, and they have not followed my teachings. They have not obeyed the laws I gave you and your ancestors.’

¹¹ “So this is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘I have decided to make terrible things happen to you. I will destroy the whole family of Judah. ¹² There were a few survivors from Judah. They came here to Egypt. But I will destroy the few survivors from the family of Judah. They will be killed with swords or die from hunger. The people of other nations will point at them and wish evil for them. People will be shocked and frightened by what has happened to them. The name Judah will become a curse word and an insult. ¹³ I will punish those who have gone to live in Egypt. I will use war, hunger, and disease to punish them. I will punish them just as I punished the city of Jerusalem. ¹⁴ Not one of the few survivors of Judah who have gone to live in Egypt will escape my punishment. None of them will survive to come back to Judah. They want to come back to Judah and live there. But not one of them will go back to Judah, except a few people who escape.’”

¹⁵ There were many people from Judah living in southern Egypt. Many of the women from Judah were meeting together in a large group and making sacrifices to other gods, and their husbands knew what they were doing. Those men said to Jeremiah, ¹⁶ “We will not listen to the message from the Lord that you spoke to us. ¹⁷ We promised to make sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, and we will do everything we promised. We will offer sacrifices and pour out drink offerings in worship to her. We did that in the past. Our ancestors, our kings, and our officials did that in the past. All of us did those things in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. When we worshiped the Queen of Heaven, we had plenty of food. We were successful. Nothing bad happened to us. ¹⁸ But then we stopped making sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, and we stopped pouring out drink offerings to her. And we have had problems ever since we stopped worshiping her. Our people have been killed by war and hunger.”

¹⁹ Then the women spoke up^[d] and said to Jeremiah, “Our husbands knew what we were doing. We had their permission to make sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven. We had their permission to pour out drink offerings to her. Our husbands also knew that we were making cakes that looked like her.”

²⁰ Then Jeremiah spoke to all the men and women who told him these things. ²¹ He said, “The Lord remembered that you made sacrifices in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. You and your ancestors, your kings, your officials, and the people of the land did that. He remembered what you had done and thought about it. ²² The Lord hated the terrible things you did, and he could not be patient with you any longer. So he made your country an empty desert. No one lives there now. Other people say bad things about that country. ²³ The reason all those bad things happened to you is that you made sacrifices to other gods. You sinned against the Lord. You didn’t obey him or follow his teachings or the laws he gave you. You didn’t keep your part of the agreement.^[e]”

²⁴ Then Jeremiah spoke to all the men and women. He said, “All you people of Judah who are now in Egypt, listen to this message from the Lord. ²⁵ This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of the people of Israel, says: ‘You women did what you said you would do. You said, “We will keep the promises we made. We promised to make sacrifices and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.” So go ahead. Do what you promised you would do. Keep your promises.’ ²⁶ But listen to this message from the Lord, all you people of Judah who are living in Egypt: ‘I, the Lord, use my own great name to make this promise: None of the people of Judah who are now living in Egypt will ever again use my name to make promises. They will never again say, “As surely as the Lord God lives ….” ²⁷ I am watching over the people of Judah, but I am not watching over them to take care of them. I am watching over them to bring them harm. The people of Judah who live in Egypt will die from hunger or be killed in war until they are completely destroyed. ²⁸ Some people of Judah will escape being killed by the sword. They will come back to Judah from Egypt. But only a few people of Judah will escape. Then the survivors of Judah who came to live in Egypt will know whose word proves to be true. They will know whether it was my word or their word that came true. ²⁹ I will give you people proof,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will punish you here in Egypt. Then you will know for sure that my promises to harm you will really happen. ³⁰ This will be your proof that I will do what I say.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Pharaoh Hophra is the king of Egypt. His enemies want to kill him. I will give Pharaoh Hophra to his enemies. Just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah to his enemy Nebuchadnezzar, in the same way I will give Pharaoh Hophra to his enemies.’”

A Message to Baruch

45 In the fourth year that Jehoiakim^[f] son of Josiah was king of Judah, Jeremiah the prophet spoke these things to Baruch son of Neriah. Baruch wrote them on a scroll. This is what Jeremiah said to Baruch: ² “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to you: ³ ‘Baruch, you have said, “It is very bad for me. The Lord has given me sorrow along with my pain. I am very tired. I am worn out because of my suffering. I cannot find rest.” ⁴ Jeremiah, tell Baruch that this is what the Lord says: I will tear down what I have built, and I will pull up what I have planted. I will do that everywhere in Judah. ⁵ Baruch, you are looking for great things for yourself. Don’t look for them, because I will make terrible things happen to all the people.’ This is what the Lord said. ‘You will have to go many places. But I will let you escape alive wherever you go.’”