OET-RV JER Chapter 37

37 By now Yoshiyah’s son Tsidkiyah (Zedekiah) reigned as king instead of Yehoyakim’s son Yehoyakin. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had made Tsidkiyah king over the Yehudah region.[ref] 2 However, Tsidkiyah, his servants, and his people wouldn’t listen to Yahweh’s messages that he’d given via the prophet Yirmeyah.

3 Eventually, King Tsidkiyah, Shelemyah’s son Yehukal, and Tsefanyah son of Maaseyah the priest, sent a message to the prophet Yirmeyah requesting him, “Pray on our behalf to our god, Yahweh. 4 At that time, Yirmeyah was still coming and going among the people, because he hadn’t yet been put in prison. 5 Far’oh’s (Pharaoh’s) army had come out of Egypt, and the Babylonians who were besieging Yerushalem heard the news about them and retreated from Yerushalem.

6 Then Yahweh gave Yirmeyah this message to proclaim: 7 Yisrael’s god, Yahweh told me that you people should say this to Yehudah’s king who sent you all to consult me: Listen Far’oh’s army which was coming out to help you all is about to return back to its own country, Egypt. 8 Then the Babylonians will return and attack this city, then they’ll capture it and burn it down. 9 Yahweh says not to deceive yourselves that the Babylonians have left, because they won’t leave, 10 because even if you all defeated the entire Babylonian army that’s attacking you so that only wounded men were left in their tents, they would get up and burn down this city.

11 Then when the Babylonian army had left Yerushalem to avoid Far’oh’s army, 12 Yirmeyah left the city to go to the Benyamin region to take possession of a section of land there among his people. 13 As he went through the Benyamin gate, a chief guard named Yiriyah (son of Shelemyah, son of Hananyah) was there. He seized the prophet Yirmeyah and claimed that he was deserting to the Babylonians.

14 But Yirmeyah disputed, “That’s a lie—I’m not deserting to the Babylonians.” However Yiriyah wouldn’t listen to him and he arrested him and took him to the officials. 15 The officials were angry at Yirmeyah and they had him beaten and put in prison. (The place had been the house of the scribe Yonatan, but it had been converted into a prison.) 16 So Yirmeyah was kept there in an underground cell for several days.

17 Then King Tsidkiyah sent someone to fetch Yirmeyah, and in his house, the king asked him privately, “Is there any message from Yahweh?”

“There is a message,” Jeremiah answered. “You’ll be handed over to the Babylonian king.” 18 Then Yirmeyah asked the king, “What crime have I committed against you or your servants or your people, that you’ve had me put in prison? 19 Where are all the other prophets who prophesied to you all that the Babylonian king wouldn’t come here? 20 But now, my master the king, please listen to this appeal: Don’t return me to the scribe Yonatan’s house, or I’ll die there.”

21 So King Tsidkiyah ordered that Yirmeyah be held in the guards’ courtyard, and he was given a loaf of bread every day from the bakers’ street, until the time when all the bread in the city ran out. But Yirmeyah remained confined in the guards’s courtyard.