Chronological

23 Woe to the shepherds (the civil leaders) who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasturing! says the Lord.

² Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for and feed My people: You have scattered My flock and driven them away and have not visited and attended to them; behold, I will visit and attend to you for the evil of your doings, says the Lord.

³ And I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries to which I have driven them and will bring them again to their folds and pastures; and they will be fruitful and multiply.

⁴ And I will set up shepherds over them who will feed them. And they will fear no more nor be dismayed, neither will any be missing or lost, says the Lord.

⁵ Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch (Sprout), and He will reign as King and do wisely and will execute justice and righteousness in the land.

⁶ In His days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name by which He shall be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.^(A)

⁷ Therefore behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when they shall no more say, As the Lord lives, Who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt,

⁸ But, As the Lord lives, Who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel from the north country and from all the countries to which I had driven them. And they shall dwell in their own land. ^(B).

⁹ Concerning the prophets: My heart [says Jeremiah] is broken within me, all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord and because of His holy words [which He has pronounced against unfaithful leaders].

¹⁰ For the land is full of adulterers (forsakers of God, Israel’s true Husband). Because of the curse [of God upon it] the land mourns, the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. They [both false prophets and people] rush into wickedness; and their course is evil, their might is not right.

¹¹ For both [false] prophet and priest are ungodly and profane; even in My house have I found their wickedness, says the Lord.

¹² Therefore their way will be to them like slippery paths in the dark; they will be driven on and fall into them. For I will bring evil upon them in the year of their punishment, says the Lord.

¹³ And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: they prophesied by Baal and caused My people Israel to err and go astray.

¹⁴ I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they encourage and strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that none returns from his wickedness. They have all of them become to Me like Sodom, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah.

¹⁵ Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets: Behold, I will feed them with [the bitterness of] wormwood and make them drink the [poisonous] water of gall, for from the [false] prophets of Jerusalem profaneness and ungodliness have gone forth into all the land.

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the [false] prophets who prophesy to you. They teach you vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility) and fill you with vain hopes; they speak a vision of their own minds and not from the mouth of the Lord.

¹⁷ They are continually saying to those who despise Me and the word of the Lord, The Lord has said: You shall have peace; and they say to everyone who walks after the stubbornness of his own mind and heart, No evil shall come upon you.

¹⁸ For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord, that he should perceive and hear His word? Who has marked His word [noticing and observing and giving attention to it] and has [actually] heard it?

¹⁹ Behold, the tempest of the Lord has gone forth in wrath, a whirling tempest; it shall whirl and burst upon the heads of the wicked.

²⁰ The anger of the Lord shall not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the thoughts and intents of His mind and heart. In the latter days you shall consider and understand it perfectly.

²¹ I did not send these [false] prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.

²² But if they had stood in My council, then they would have caused My people to hear My words, then they would have turned them [My people] from their evil way and from the evil of their doings.

²³ Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off?

²⁴ Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.

²⁵ I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed [visions on my bed at night].

²⁶ [How long shall this state of things continue?] How long yet shall it be in the minds of the prophets who prophesy falsehood, even the prophets of the deceit of their own hearts,

²⁷ Who think that they can cause My people to forget My name by their dreams which every man tells to his neighbor, just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal?

²⁸ The prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream; but he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat [for nourishment]? says the Lord.

²⁹ Is not My word like fire [that consumes all that cannot endure the test]? says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks in pieces the rock [of most stubborn resistance]?

³⁰ Therefore behold, I am against the [false] prophets, says the Lord, [I am even now descending upon them with punishment, these prophets] who steal My words from one another [imitating the phrases of the true prophets].

³¹ Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their [own deceitful] tongues and say, Thus says the Lord.

³² Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord, and tell them and cause My people to err and go astray by their lies and by their vain boasting and recklessness—when I did not send them or command them; nor do they profit these people at all, says the Lord.

³³ And when these people, or a prophet or a priest, ask you, What is the burden of the Lord [the thing to be lifted up now]? then you shall say to them, What burden [indeed]! [You are the burden!] And I will disburden Myself of you and I will cast you off, says the Lord.

³⁴ And as for the prophet, the priest, or [any of these] the people, whoever [in mockery calls the word of the Lord a burden and] says, The burden of the Lord, I will even visit in wrath and punish that man and his house.

³⁵ [For the future, in speaking of the utterances of the Lord] thus shall you say every one to his neighbor and every one to his brother: What has the Lord answered? or, What has the Lord spoken?

³⁶ But the burden of the Lord you must mention no more, for every man’s burden is his own response and word [for as they mockingly call all prophecies burdens, whether good or bad, so will it prove to be to them; God will take them at their own word]; for you pervert the words [not of a lifeless idol, but] of the living God, the Lord of hosts, our God!

³⁷ Thus shall you [reverently] say to the prophet: What has the Lord answered you? Or, What has the Lord spoken?

³⁸ But if you say, The burden of the Lord, therefore thus says the Lord: Because you said these words, The burden of the Lord, when I sent to you, saying, You shall not say, The burden of the Lord,

³⁹ Therefore behold, I, even I, will assuredly take you up and cast you away from My presence, you and the city [Jerusalem] which I gave to you and to your fathers.

⁴⁰ And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you and a perpetual shame which will not be forgotten.

24 After Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile Jeconiah [also called Coniah and Jehoiachin] son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon, the Lord showed me [in a vision] two baskets of figs set before the temple of the Lord.

² One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe; but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten.

³ Then the Lord said to me, What do you see, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs—the good figs very good, and the bad very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.

⁴ Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁵ Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so will I regard the captives of Judah whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

⁶ For I will set My eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up.

⁷ And I will give them a heart to know (recognize, understand, and be acquainted with) Me, that I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

⁸ And as for the bad figs, which are so bad that they cannot be eaten, surely thus says the Lord, So will I give up Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes and the residue of Jerusalem who remains in this land and those who dwell in the land of Egypt.

⁹ I will even give them up to be a dismay and a horror and to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil, to be a reproach, a byword or proverb, a taunt, and a curse in all places where I will drive them.

¹⁰ And I will send the sword, famine, and pestilence among them until they are consumed from off the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.

25 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah—which was the first year of the reign of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon—

² Which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

³ For these twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, even to this day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you persistently early and late, but you have not listened and obeyed.

⁴ Although the Lord persistently sent you all the prophets, His servants, yet you have not listened and obeyed or [even] inclined your ear to hear.

⁵ [The prophets came on My behalf] saying, Turn again now every one from his evil way and wrongdoing; [that you may not forfeit the right to] dwell in the land that the Lord gave to you and to your fathers from of old and forevermore.

⁶ Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.

⁷ Yet you have not listened to and obeyed Me, says the Lord, that you might provoke Me to anger with the works (idols) made by your hands to your own hurt.

⁸ Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not heard and obeyed My words,

⁹ Behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, says the Lord, and I will send for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, My servant [or agent to fulfill My designs], and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all these nations round about; and I will devote them [to God] and utterly destroy them and make them an amazement, a hissing, and perpetual and agelong desolations.

¹⁰ Moreover, I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones [grinding out the meal] and the light of the candle [which every home burned throughout the night].^(C)

¹¹ And this whole land shall be a waste and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon ^[a]seventy years.^(D)

¹² Then when seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, says the Lord, for their iniquity, and will make the land [of the Chaldeans] a perpetual waste.^(E)

¹³ And I will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.

¹⁴ For many nations and great kings shall make bondmen of them, even them [the Chaldeans who enslaved other nations]; and I will recompense [all of] them according to their deeds and according to the work of their [own] hands.

¹⁵ For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to me: Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it.

¹⁶ They shall drink and reel to and fro and be crazed because of the sword that I will send among them.

¹⁷ Then I [Jeremiah] took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made all the nations drink it to whom the Lord had sent me: [that is,]

¹⁸ Jerusalem and the cities of Judah [being most guilty because their privileges were greatest], its kings and princes, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, a hissing, and a curse, as it is to this day;^(F)

¹⁹ Pharaoh king of Egypt, his servants, his princes, all his people,

²⁰ And all the mixed foreign population; all the kings of the land of Uz; and all the kings of the land of the Philistines and [their cities of] Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod;

²¹ Edom, Moab, and the children of Ammon;

²² All the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the islands and the coastlands across the [Mediterranean] Sea;

²³ Dedan, Tema, Buz [neighboring tribes north of Arabia], and all who clip off the corners of their hair and beards;^(G)

²⁴ All the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the mixed foreign people who dwell in the desert;

²⁵ All the kings of Zimri, all the kings of Elam (Persia), and all the kings of Media;

²⁶ All the kings of the north, far and near, one after another—and all the kingdoms of the world which are on the face of the earth. And after them the king of Sheshach (Babel or Babylon) shall drink.

²⁷ Then you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk, vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword which I am sending among you.

²⁸ And if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts: You shall surely drink!

²⁹ For behold, I am beginning to work evil in the city which is called by My Name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am calling for a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord of hosts.^(H)

³⁰ Therefore prophesy against them all these words and say to them: The Lord shall roar from on high and utter His voice from His holy habitation; He shall roar mightily against His fold and pasture. He shall give a shout like those who tread grapes [in the winepress, but His shout will be] against all the inhabitants of the earth.

³¹ A noise will come even to the ends of the earth, for the Lord has a controversy and an indictment against the nations; He will enter into judgment with all mankind; as for the wicked, He will give them to the sword, says the Lord.

³² Thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, evil will go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirling tempest will rise from the uttermost parts of the earth.

³³ And those slain by the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth. They shall not be lamented or gathered or buried; their [dead bodies] shall be dung upon the ground.^(I)

³⁴ Wail, you shepherds, and cry; and roll in ashes, you principal ones of the flock. For the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions have fully come, and you shall fall and be dashed into pieces like a choice vessel.

³⁵ And the shepherds shall have no way to flee, nor the principal ones of the flock any means of escape.

³⁶ A voice! The cry of the shepherds and the wailing of the principal ones of the flock! For the Lord is laying waste and destroying their pasture.

³⁷ And the peaceable folds are devastated and brought to silence because of the fierce anger of the Lord.

³⁸ He has left His shelter like the lion; for their land has become a waste and an astonishment because of the fierceness of the oppressor and because of [the Lord’s] fierce anger.