11 Then when the Babylonian army had left Yerushalem (Jerusalem) to avoid Par’oh’s (Pharaoh’s) army, 12 Yirmiyah (Jeremiah) 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 Yirmiyah and claimed that he was deserting to the Babylonians.

14 But Yirmiyah 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 Yirmiyah and they had him beaten and put in prison. (The place had been the house of the scribe Yonatan (Jonathan), but it had been converted into a prison.) 16 So Yirmiyah was kept there in an underground cell for several days.

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

“There is a message,” Yirmiyah answered. “You’ll be handed over to the Babylonian king.” 18 Then Yirmiyah 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 Yirmiyah 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 Yirmiyah remained confined in the guards’ courtyard.