Beginning

The people do not obey the Lord's message

42 All the army officers went to speak to the prophet Jeremiah. They included Kareah's son Johanan and Hoshaiah's son Jezaniah. All the people went with them, important people and ordinary people. ² They said to Jeremiah, ‘Please listen to us. Pray to the Lord your God for those of us who remain alive. You can see that only a few of us remain from the many people that we were before. ³ Please ask the Lord to tell us where we should go. Ask him what we should do.’

⁴ The prophet Jeremiah replied, ‘I agree to do that. I will pray to the Lord your God, as you have asked me to do. I will tell you everything that the Lord says to answer you. I will not hide anything from you.’

⁵ They said to Jeremiah, ‘We promise to do everything that the Lord sends you to say to us. We ask the Lord to listen to our promise. May he punish us if we do not do what we have promised to do. ⁶ We have asked you to pray to the Lord our God for us. We will obey what he tells us to do. We will obey him whether we like what he tells us, or whether we do not like it. We will obey him because we want to enjoy a good life.’

⁷ Ten days after that, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. ⁸ So Jeremiah told Kareah's son Johanan, the other army officers and all the people to come to him. That included everyone, important people and ordinary people. ⁹ Jeremiah said to them, ‘You sent me to ask the Lord, Israel's God, what you should do. He says this to you: ¹⁰ “You should stay here in the land of Judah. If you do that, I will build you up and make you strong again. I will not knock you down. I will help you to grow in the land, like plants with good roots. I will not pull you up. I have punished you with terrible trouble, and that makes me very sad. So now I will help you. ¹¹ You are afraid of the king of Babylon now, but do not be afraid of him any more. I am with you to help you. I will save you and I will rescue you from his power. I, the Lord, promise you this. ¹² I will be kind and I will help you. I will cause the king of Babylon to be kind to you. He will let you return to your own land as your home.”

¹³ You must not refuse to obey this message from the Lord your God. Do not say, “We will not stay here in this land.” ¹⁴ Do not say, “We refuse to stay here. Instead, we will go to live in Egypt. There, we will not have trouble from wars. We will not hear the noise of trumpets as people fight battles. We will not be hungry because there is no food.” ¹⁵ If you say those things, then the Lord has a message for you, you people who remain in Judah. The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “If you decide to go and live in Egypt, I will cause you to have the same troubles there. ¹⁶ You are afraid of wars here, but I will cause wars to hurt you in Egypt. You worry that you might be hungry here, but I will make you hungry in Egypt. Finally, you will die in Egypt. ¹⁷ All the people who decide to go and live in Egypt will die there. War, famine or disease will kill everyone. Nobody will escape from the terrible trouble that I will send. Nobody will remain alive.”

¹⁸ The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “If you go to Egypt, I will be very angry with you. I punished the people of Jerusalem because I was very angry with them. I will be as angry as that with you, if you go to Egypt. Other people will think that you are disgusting. They will insult you. They will use your name as a curse, because God has cursed you. You will never see this land of Judah again.”

¹⁹ Listen to me, you people who still remain in Judah. The Lord has said to you, “Do not go to Egypt.” You must understand that I am now warning you. ²⁰ You made a terrible mistake when you asked me to pray to the Lord your God for you. You told me, “Tell us everything that the Lord our God says, and we will do it.” ²¹ Today I have told you what he said. But you still do not want to obey the Lord. You will not do what he sent me to tell you. ²² So now I tell you this: When you go to the place where you want to live, war, famine or disease will kill you.’

The people of Judah go to Egypt

43 Jeremiah finished telling the people the Lord's message to them. He told them everything that the Lord their God had sent him to tell them. ² Then Hoshaiah's son Azariah and Kareah's son Johanan and some other proud men said to Jeremiah, ‘You are speaking lies! The Lord our God has not sent you to say to us, “You must not go to Egypt to live there.” ³ You are telling us what Neriah's son Baruch wants you to say. He wants to hurt us. He wants the soldiers from Babylon to kill us, or to take us as prisoners to Babylon.’

⁴ So Kareah's son Johanan, all the other army officers and all the other people did not obey the Lord's command. They refused to stay in Judah. ⁵ Instead, Johanan and all the officers led the people away. Those were the people who had returned from all the nations where their enemies had taken them as prisoners. They had returned to their homes in Judah. ⁶ Now the army officers led them away. They also took the men, women and children that Captain Nebuzaradan had allowed to remain with Gedaliah. They included the king's daughters. (Gedaliah was Ahikam's son and Shaphan's grandson.) They took the prophet Jeremiah and Neriah's son Baruch with them.

⁷ The people went to Egypt because they did not obey the Lord. They went as far as the city of Tahpanhes.

⁸ When they arrived in Tahpanhes, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. ⁹ He said, ‘Choose some large stones and take them to Pharaoh's palace that is here in Tahpanhes. Bury the stones under the path at the entrance of the palace. Do it while the people of Judah are watching you. ¹⁰ Then say to the people, “The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says this: I will call for my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, to come here. He will put his throne on the path over these stones that I have hidden. They will put up a royal tent for him to sit under. ¹¹ He will come here and he will attack Egypt.

¹² He will burn the temples of Egypt's gods with fire. He will burn their gods or he will carry them away. He will take everything that he wants from Egypt. He will return home in good health. ¹³ He will knock down the pillars of the temple where people worship their sun god. He will destroy all the temples of Egypt's gods.” ’

God will punish the people of Judah

44 The Lord spoke to Jeremiah about the people of Judah who were now living in Egypt. They were living in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis and places in the south part of Egypt. ² This was the Lord's message to them:

‘The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “You saw the great trouble that I sent to the people of Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah. Their towns have become heaps of stones and nobody lives in them. ³ That happened because of the wicked things that the people did in those places. They offered sacrifices to other gods. They worshipped gods that they never knew before. You and your ancestors did not know those gods either. That made me very angry. ⁴ Many times I sent my servants the prophets to speak to them. They warned them, ‘Do not do this disgusting thing that the Lord hates!’ ⁵ But the people there did not listen to my message. They refused to obey me. They did not stop doing wicked things. They did not stop offering sacrifices to other gods. ⁶ So I became very angry with the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I sent them terrible trouble, like a fire that burned their towns and their streets. That is why their towns have become heaps of stones, as they still are today.” 

⁷ Now the Lord God Almighty, Israel's God, says, “You are causing more trouble for yourselves. Why are you doing that? All the men, women, children and babies will disappear from Judah. None of your people will remain alive. ⁸ You continue to make me angry because of the things that you are doing. You are offering sacrifices to the gods of Egypt, where you now live. As a result, you will destroy yourselves. The people of all the other nations will use your name as a curse. They will all laugh at you. ⁹ Do not forget about all the wicked things that your ancestors did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. I punished them, as well as their kings and their kings' wives. And I punished you and your wives too. ¹⁰ Even now your people are still proud. They have not respected my authority. They have not obeyed the laws and commands that I gave to you and to your ancestors.”

¹¹ So the Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “Listen to me! I will certainly cause you to have great trouble. I will destroy all Judah's people. ¹² I will remove the people who remained in Judah and who decided to come here to live in Egypt. They will all die here. War or famine will kill them. All of them will die here in Egypt, important people and ordinary people. Other people will think that they are disgusting. They will insult them. They will use their name as a curse, because God has cursed them. ¹³ I will punish the people who have come to live in Egypt. War, famine or disease will kill them, in the way that I punished the people of Jerusalem. ¹⁴ None of the people who remained in Judah and who came to live here in Egypt will escape. They will not remain alive to return to Judah. They may want very much to return, but only a few will be able to run away and go home.” ’

¹⁵ A large crowd of Judah's people listened to Jeremiah. They came from the places where they now lived in the north and the south of Egypt. Some men were there who knew that their wives were offering sacrifices to other gods. Those men and their wives said to Jeremiah, ¹⁶ ‘We do not believe that your message really comes from the Lord. ¹⁷ So we will continue to do what we have promised to do. We will make sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven. We will pour out drink offerings to her.^[a] That is what our ancestors, our kings and our leaders did when we lived in Jerusalem and in the other towns of Judah. When we did that, we had plenty of food to eat. We enjoyed a good life and we had no troubles. ¹⁸ But since we stopped offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, we have not had those good things. War and famine have been killing our people.’

¹⁹ The women said, ‘It is true that we offered sacrifices and drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven. We also made cakes that were like her image. But our husbands knew what we were doing and they helped us.’

²⁰ Then Jeremiah said this to all those men and women who had answered him:

²¹ ‘The Lord saw everything that you were doing. You must surely realize that! He knew about the things that you, your ancestors, your kings, your leaders and all the people were doing. He remembered all the sacrifices that you offered to other gods in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. ²² Finally, he had to punish you for the wicked and disgusting things that you were doing. Because of that, your land has become an empty place, like a desert. Its towns are heaps of stones where nobody lives. People use its name as a curse. ²³ That happened because you have offered sacrifices to other gods. You have done many sins against the Lord. You have refused to obey him. You have not obeyed his laws, his teaching or his commands. That is why all this trouble has happened to you now.’

²⁴ Then Jeremiah said this to all the people, including the women:

‘Listen to the Lord's message, all you people of Judah who are now living in Egypt. ²⁵ The Lord God Almighty, Israel's God, says, “You and your wives have certainly done the things that you said you would do. You said, ‘We will continue to do what we have promised to do. We will make sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven. We will pour out drink offerings to her.’ So do all those things that you promised to do!”

²⁶ But listen to the Lord's message to all you people of Judah who are living in Egypt. The Lord says, “I now promise this to you, with the authority of my own name. None of you who live in Egypt will ever use my name again when you make a promise. You will not say, ‘I promise you I will do this, as surely as the Lord God lives.’ ²⁷ Listen to me! I will choose to hurt you and not to help you. War or famine will kill all the people of Judah who are living in Egypt. None of them will remain alive. ²⁸ But a few of them will escape death and return to Judah from Egypt. They will be very few people. Then all the people of Judah who came to live in Egypt will know who speaks the truth. Do I speak the truth, or do they speak the truth? I do!”

²⁹ The Lord also says, “I will show you that I will surely punish you in this place. I will tell you something that will soon happen. Then you will know that my promise to punish you will certainly become true. ³⁰ I tell you now that I will put Hophra, king of Egypt, under the power of his enemies, who want to kill him. That is the same thing that I did to King Zedekiah of Judah. I put him under the power of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who wanted to kill him.” ’

God's message to Baruch

45 Baruch wrote down on a scroll the words that Jeremiah told him to write. That happened in the fourth year that Josiah's son, Jehoiakim, ruled Judah as king. At that time, Jeremiah said to Baruch, ² ‘The Lord, Israel's God, says this to you, Baruch: ³ You said, “I have terrible trouble! I have a lot of pain, and the Lord has also made me very sad. I am so upset that I have become very weak. I cannot rest at all.” 

⁴ But the Lord says this to you, Baruch: “I will soon knock down the things that I have built. I will pull out of the ground the things that I have planted. I will do that everywhere in the land. ⁵ If you want to become famous and important, do not hope for that to happen. I will send great trouble to all the people on the earth. But I promise that I will keep your life safe, wherever you go.” That is what the Lord says.’