Study Desk

Because he did not kill me before my birth, So that my mother might have been my grave, And her womb always pregnant.

Why did I come out of the womb To see trouble and sorrow, So that my days have been filled with shame?

O house of David, thus says the LORD: "Administer justice in the morning, And rescue the one who has been robbed from the hand of his oppressor, That My wrath will not roar up like fire And burn so [hotly] that none can extinguish it, Because of the evil of their deeds.

"Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem: They commit adultery and walk in lies; They encourage and strengthen the hands of evildoers, So that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become like Sodom to Me, And her inhabitants like Gomorrah.

"Can anyone hide himself in secret places So that I cannot see him?" says the LORD. "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says the LORD.

"For you will no longer remember the oracle of the LORD, because every man's own word will become the oracle, [for as they mockingly call all prophecies oracles, whether good or bad, so will it prove to be to them; God will take them at their own word]; and you have perverted the words [not of a lifeless idol, but] of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.

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

Then the LORD said to me, "What do you see, Jeremiah?" And I said, "Figs, the good figs, very good; and the bad figs, very bad, so rotten that they cannot be eaten."

"Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the captives of Judah, whom I have sent from this place into the land of the Chaldeans.

'And as for the bad figs, which are so rotten that they cannot be eaten,' surely thus says the LORD, 'so I will abandon Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and those who live in the land of Egypt.

"Yet you have not listened to Me," says the LORD, "so that you have provoked Me to anger with the work (idols) of your hands to your own harm.

'It may be that they will listen and everyone will turn from his wickedness, so that I may relent and reverse [My decision concerning] the disaster which I am planning to do to them because of their malevolent deeds.'

then I will make this house [the temple] like Shiloh, and I will make this city [subject to] the curse of all nations of the earth [because it will be so vile in their sight]."'"

But the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, so that he was not given into the hands of the people to put him to death.

and the prophet Jeremiah said, "Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD confirm and fulfill your words which you have prophesied to bring back the articles of the LORD'S house and all the captives, from Babylon to this place.

Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, "Thus says the LORD, 'Even so within two full years I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations.'" Then the prophet Jeremiah went his way.

So Hananiah the [false] prophet died [two months later], the same year, in the seventh month.

"So says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the captives whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon,

thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Behold (listen very carefully), I am sending the sword, famine, and virulent disease (pestilence) on them, and I will make them like rotten figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten.

"It will be that as I have watched over them to uproot and to break down, to overthrow, destroy, and afflict with disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant [with good]," says the LORD.