Study Desk

When times were good, I warned you. But you ignored me, just as you have done since Israel was young.

You and your mother were born in Judah, but I will throw both of you into a foreign country, where you will die,

You were supposed to take care of my people, but instead you chased them away. So now I'll really take care of you, and believe me, you will pay for your crimes!

A time will come when you will again worship me. But you will no longer call me the Living God who rescued Israel from Egypt.

But I, the Lord , tell you that these prophets have never attended a meeting of my council in heaven or heard me speak.

I did not send these prophets or speak to them, but they ran to find you and to preach their message.

But everything they say comes from their own twisted minds. How long can this go on?

Their dreams and my truth are as different as straw and wheat. But when prophets speak for me, they must say only what I have told them.

These unfaithful prophets claim I give them their dreams, but it isn't true. I didn't choose them to be my prophets, and yet they babble on and on, speaking in my name, while stealing words from each other. And when my people hear these liars, they are led astray instead of being helped. So I warn you that I am now the enemy of these prophets. I, the Lord , have spoken.

But if you disobey me and say, "Here is news from the Lord ,"

"Jeremiah," the Lord asked, "what do you see?" "Figs," I said. "Some are very good, but the others are too rotten to eat."

For twenty-three years now, ever since the thirteenth year that Josiah was king, I have been telling you what the Lord has told me. But you have not listened.

The Lord has sent prophets to you time after time, but you refused to listen.

But you refused to listen to my prophets. So I, the Lord , say that you have made me angry by worshiping idols, and you are the ones who were hurt by what you did.

and now I will let you be attacked by nations from the north, and especially by my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. You and other nearby nations will be destroyed and left in ruins forever. Everyone who sees what has happened will be shocked, but they will still make fun of you.

The Lord 's people are his flock, and you leaders were the shepherds. But now it's your turn to be butchered like sheep. You'll shatter like fine pottery dropped on the floor. So roll on the ground, crying and mourning.

Again and again I have sent my servants the prophets to preach to you, but you ignored them as well. Now I am warning you that if you don't start obeying me right away,

Then I told the judges and everyone else: The Lord himself sent me to tell you about the terrible things he will do to you, to Jerusalem, and to the temple. But if you change your ways and start obeying the Lord , he will change his mind.

But if you put me to death, you and everyone else in Jerusalem will be guilty of murdering an innocent man, because everything I preached came from the Lord .

After these leaders finished speaking, an important man named Ahikam son of Shaphan spoke up for me as well. And so, I wasn't handed over to the crowd to be killed. While Jehoiakim was still king of Judah, a man named Uriah son of Shemaiah left his hometown of Kiriath-Jearim and came to Jerusalem. Uriah was one of the Lord 's prophets, and he was saying the same things about Judah and Jerusalem that I had been saying. And when Jehoiakim and his officials and military officers heard what Uriah said, they tried to arrest him, but he escaped to Egypt. So Jehoiakim sent Elnathan son of Achbor and some other men after Uriah, and they brought him back. Then Jehoiakim had Uriah killed and his body dumped in a common burial pit.