Beginning

42 Then Johanan and the army captains and all the people, great and small, came to Jeremiah ² and said, “Please pray for us to the Lord your God, for as you know so well, we are only a tiny remnant of what we were before. ³ Beg the Lord your God to show us what to do and where to go.”

⁴ “All right,” Jeremiah replied. “I will ask him and I will tell you what he says. I will hide nothing from you.”

⁵ Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the curse of God be on us if we refuse to obey whatever he says we should do! ⁶ Whether we like it or not, we will obey the Lord our God, to whom we send you with our plea. For if we obey him, everything will turn out well for us.”

⁷ Ten days later the Lord gave his reply to Jeremiah. ⁸ So he called for Johanan and the captains of his forces, and for all the people, great and small, ⁹ and said to them: “You sent me to the Lord, the God of Israel, with your request, and this is his reply:

¹⁰ “Stay here in this land. If you do, I will bless you, and no one will harm you. For I am sorry for all the punishment I have had to give to you. ¹¹ Don’t fear the king of Babylon anymore, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand. ¹² And I will be merciful to you by making him kind so that he will not kill you or make slaves of you but will let you stay here in your land.

^13-14 “But if you refuse to obey the Lord and say, ‘We will not stay here,’—and insist on going to Egypt where you think you will be free from war and hunger and alarms, ¹⁵ then this is what the Lord replies, O remnant of Judah: The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: If you insist on going to Egypt, ¹⁶ the war and famine you fear will follow close behind you, and you will perish there. ¹⁷ That is the fate awaiting every one of you who insists on going to live in Egypt. Yes, you will die from sword, famine, and disease. None of you will escape from the evil I will bring upon you there.

¹⁸ “For the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Just as my anger and fury were poured out upon the people of Jerusalem, so it will be poured out on you when you enter Egypt. You will be received with disgust and with hatred—you will be cursed and reviled. And you will never again see your own land. ¹⁹ For the Lord has said: O remnant of Judah, do not go to Egypt!”

Jeremiah concluded: “Never forget the warning I have given you today. ²⁰ If you go, it will be at the cost of your lives. For you were deceitful when you sent me to pray for you and said, ‘Just tell us what God says and we will do it!’ ²¹ And today I have told you exactly what he said, but you will not obey any more now than you did the other times. ²² Therefore know for a certainty that you will die by sword, famine, and disease in Egypt, where you insist on going.”

43 When Jeremiah had finished giving this message from God to all the people, ^2-3 Azariah (son of Hoshaiah) and Johanan (son of Kareah) and all the other proud men said to Jeremiah, “You lie! The Lord our God hasn’t told you to tell us not to go to Egypt! Baruch (son of Neriah) has plotted against us and told you to say this so that we will stay here and be killed by the Babylonians or carried off to Babylon as slaves.”

⁴ So Johanan and all the guerrilla leaders and all the people refused to obey the Lord and stay in Judah. ⁵ All of them, including all those who had returned from the nearby countries where they had fled, now started off for Egypt with Johanan and the other captains in command. ⁶ In the crowd were men, women, and children, the king’s daughters, and all those whom Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, had left with Gedaliah. They even forced Jeremiah and Baruch to go with them too. ⁷ And so they arrived in Egypt at the city of Tahpanhes, for they would not obey the Lord.

⁸ Then at Tahpanhes, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah again and said: ⁹ “Call together the men of Judah and, as they watch you, bury large rocks between the pavement stones at the entrance of Pharaoh’s palace here in Tahpanhes, ¹⁰ and tell the men of Judah this: The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: I will surely bring Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, here to Egypt, for he is my servant. I will set his throne upon these stones that I have hidden. He shall spread his royal canopy over them. ¹¹ And when he comes, he shall destroy the land of Egypt, killing all those I want killed and capturing those I want captured, and many shall die of plague. ¹² He will set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt and burn the idols and carry off the people as his captives. And he shall plunder the land of Egypt as a shepherd picks fleas from his cloak! And he himself shall leave unharmed. ¹³ And he shall break down the obelisks standing in the city of Heliopolis and burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.”

44 This is the message God gave to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews who were living in the north of Egypt in the cities of Migdol, Tahpanhes, and Memphis, and throughout southern Egypt as well:

^2-3 The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You saw what I did to Jerusalem and to all the cities of Judah. Because of all their wickedness they lie in heaps and ashes, without a living soul. For my anger rose high against them for worshiping other gods—“gods” that neither they nor you nor any of your fathers have ever known.

⁴ I sent my servants, the prophets, to protest over and over again and to plead with them not to do this horrible thing I hate, ⁵ but they wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t turn back from their wicked ways; they have kept right on with their sacrifices to these “gods.” ⁶ And so my fury and anger boiled over and fell as fire upon the cities of Judah and into the streets of Jerusalem, and there is desolation until this day.

⁷ And now the Lord, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, asks you: Why are you destroying yourselves? For not one of you shall live—not a man, woman, or child among you who has come here from Judah, not even the babies in arms. ⁸ For you are rousing my anger with the idols you have made and worshiped here in Egypt, burning incense to them, and causing me to destroy you completely and to make you a curse and a stench in the nostrils of all the nations of the earth. ⁹ Have you forgotten the sins of your fathers, the sins of the kings and queens of Judah, your own sins, and the sins of your wives in Judah and Jerusalem? ¹⁰ And even until this very hour there has been no apology; no one has wanted to return to me or follow the laws I gave you and your fathers before you.

¹¹ Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, says: There is fury in my face and I will destroy every one of you! ¹² I will take this remnant of Judah that insisted on coming here to Egypt, and I will consume them. They shall fall here in Egypt, killed by famine and sword; all shall die, from the least important to the greatest. They shall be despised and loathed, cursed and hated. ¹³ I will punish them in Egypt just as I punished them in Jerusalem, by sword, famine, and disease. ¹⁴ Not one of them shall escape from my wrath except those who repent of their coming and escape from the others by returning again to their own land.

¹⁵ Then all the women present and all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to idols (it was a great crowd of all the Jews in southern Egypt) answered Jeremiah:

¹⁶ “We will not listen to your false ‘Messages from God’! ¹⁷ We will do whatever we want to. We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven^[a] and sacrifice to her just as much as we like—just as we and our fathers before us, and our kings and princes have always done in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and happy! ¹⁸ But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshiping her, we have been in great trouble and have been destroyed by sword and famine.”

¹⁹ “And,” the women added, “do you suppose that we were worshiping the Queen of Heaven and pouring out our libations to her and making cakes for her with her image on them, without our husbands knowing it and helping us? Of course not!”

²⁰ Then Jeremiah said to all of them, men and women alike, who had given him that answer:

²¹ “Do you think the Lord didn’t know that you and your fathers, your kings and princes, and all the people were burning incense to idols in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ²² It was because he could no longer bear all the evil things you were doing that he made your land desolate, an incredible ruin, cursed, without an inhabitant, as it is today. ²³ The very reason all these terrible things have befallen you is because you have burned incense and sinned against the Lord and refused to obey him.”

²⁴ Then Jeremiah said to them all, including the women: “Listen to the word of the Lord, all you citizens of Judah who are here in Egypt! ²⁵ The Lord, the God of Israel, says: Both you and your wives have said that you will never give up your devotion and sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, and you have proved it by your actions. Then go ahead and carry out your promises and vows to her! ²⁶ But listen to the word of the Lord, all you Jews who are living in the land of Egypt: I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord, that it will do you no good to seek my help and blessing anymore, saying, ‘O Lord our God, help us!’ ²⁷ For I will watch over you, but not for good! I will see to it that evil befalls you, and you shall be destroyed by war and famine until all of you are dead.

²⁸ “Only those who return to Judah (it will be but a tiny remnant) shall escape my wrath, but all who refuse to go back—who insist on living in Egypt—shall find out who tells the truth, I or they! ²⁹ And this is the proof I give you that all I have threatened will happen to you and that I will punish you here: ³⁰ I will turn Pharaoh Hophra,^[b] king of Egypt, over to those who seek his life, just as I turned Zedekiah, king of Judah, over to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.”

45 This is the message^[c] Jeremiah gave to Baruch in the fourth year of the reign of King Jehoiakim (son of Josiah), after Baruch had written down all God’s messages as Jeremiah was dictating them to him:

² O Baruch, the Lord God of Israel says this to you: ³ You have said, Woe is me! Don’t I have troubles enough already? And now the Lord has added more! I am weary of my own sighing and I find no rest. ⁴ But tell Baruch this, The Lord says: I will destroy this nation that I built; I will wipe out what I established. ⁵ Are you seeking great things for yourself? Don’t do it! For though I will bring great evil upon all these people, I will protect you wherever you go, as your reward.