Study Desk

This is what the Lord of Armies says: “I am about to send sword, famine, and plague against them, and I will make them like rotten figs that are inedible because they are so bad.

So now, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth who has been acting like a prophet among you?

Again I will build you so that you will be rebuilt,Virgin Israel.You will take up your tambourines againand go out in joyful dancing.

I have surely heard Ephraim moaning,“You disciplined me, and I have been disciplinedlike an untrained calf.Take me back, so that I can return,for you, Lord, are my God.

Just as I watched over them to uproot and to tear them down, to demolish and to destroy, and to cause disaster, so will I watch over them to build and to plant them”—this is the Lord’s declaration.

So I bought the field in Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and I weighed out the silver to him—seventeen shekels of silver.

‘This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Take these scrolls—this purchase agreement with the sealed copy and this open copy—and put them in an earthen storage jar so they will last a long time.

They entered and possessed it, but they did not obey you or live according to your instructions. They failed to perform all you commanded them to do, and so you have brought all this disaster on them.

I will give them integrity of heart and action so that they will fear me always, for their good and for the good of their descendants after them.

“I will make a permanent covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put fear of me in their hearts so they will never again turn away from me.

“For this is what the Lord says: Just as I have brought all this terrible disaster on these people, so am I about to bring on them all the good I am promising them.

“This is what the Lord says: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that day and night cease to come at their regular time,

Even as the stars of heaven cannot be counted, and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so too I will make innumerable the descendants of my servant David and the Levites who minister to me.”

So the prophet Jeremiah related all these words to King Zedekiah of Judah in Jerusalem

So I took Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah, son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons—the entire house of the Rechabites—

You must not build a house or sow seed or plant a vineyard. Those things are not for you. Rather, you must live in tents your whole life, so you may live a long time on the soil where you stay as a resident alien.’

We have obeyed Jonadab, son of our ancestor Rechab, in all he commanded us. So we haven’t drunk wine our whole life—we, our wives, our sons, and our daughters.

However, when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched into the land, we said, ‘Come, let’s go into Jerusalem to get away from the Chaldean and Aramean armies.’ So we have been living in Jerusalem.”

So Jeremiah summoned Baruch son of Neriah. At Jeremiah’s dictation, Baruch wrote on a scroll all the words the Lord had spoken to Jeremiah.

so you must go and read from the scroll—which you wrote at my dictation—the words of the Lord in the hearing of the people at the temple of the Lord on a day of fasting. Read his words in the hearing of all the Judeans who are coming from their cities.