Study Desk

Others will answer, "It's because the people worshiped foreign gods and broke the agreement that the Lord their God had made with them."

Now you will be disgraced because of your sins. Your leaders will be swept away by the wind, and the nations you trusted will be captured and dragged to a foreign country.

When I think of the prophets, I am shocked, and I tremble like someone drunk, because of the Lord and his sacred words.

The prophets in Samaria were disgusting to me, because they preached in the name of Baal and led my people astray.

This country will be as empty as a desert, because I will make all of you the slaves of the king of Babylonia for seventy years.

They will vomit and act crazy, because of the war this cup of anger will bring to them."

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 .

King Jehoiachin and the other people who were taken from Judah to Babylonia will be allowed to come back here as well. All this will happen because I will smash the power of the king of Babylonia!

You feel secure, because you think I have sent prophets to speak for me in Babylonia.

You think Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah are prophets because they claim to speak for me. But they are lying! I haven't told them anything. They are also committing other horrible sins in your community, such as sleeping with the wives of their friends. So I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar, who will put them to death while the rest of you watch. And in the future, when you want to put a curse on someone, you will say, "I pray that the Lord will kill you in the same way the king of Babylonia burned Zedekiah and Ahab to death!"

Your friends have forgotten you; they don't care anymore. Even I have acted like an enemy. And because your sins are horrible and countless, I will be cruel as I punish you.

My people will come to Mount Zion and celebrate; their faces will glow because of my blessings. I'll give them grain, grapes, and olive oil, as well as sheep and cattle. Israel will be prosperous and grow like a garden with plenty of water.

Young women and young men, together with the elderly, will celebrate and dance, because I will comfort them and turn their sorrow into happiness.

In Ramah a voice is heard, crying and weeping loudly. Rachel mourns for her children and refuses to be comforted, because they are dead.

Zedekiah had ordered me to be held there because I told everyone that the Lord had said: I am the Lord , and I am about to let the king of Babylonia conquer Jerusalem.

Jeremiah, your cousin Hanamel, the son of your uncle Shallum, will visit you. He must sell his field near the town of Anathoth, and because you are his nearest relative, you have the right and the responsibility to buy it and keep it in the family.

You are famous because you worked miracles in Egypt, and you are still working them in Israel and in the rest of the world as well.

The kings and the officials, the priests and the prophets, and everyone else in Israel and Judah have turned from me and made me angry by worshiping idols. Again and again I have tried to teach my people to obey me, but they refuse to be corrected. I am going to get rid of Jerusalem, because its people have done nothing but evil.

But someday, people will again spend their silver to buy fields everywhere—in the territory of Benjamin, the region around Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, and in the hill country, the foothills to the west, and the Southern Desert. Buyers and sellers and witnesses will sign and seal the bills of sale for the fields. It will happen, because I will give this land back to my people. I, the Lord , have spoken.

but you decided to obey me and do the right thing by setting your Hebrew slaves completely free. You even went to my temple, and in my name you made an agreement to set them free. But you have abused my name, because you broke your agreement and forced your former slaves back into slavery.