Jeremiah’s opponents plot against him

18 Then some of the people said, “Come, let us make plans to get rid of Jeremiah. After all, priests will always teach us God’s laws, wise people will always give us good advice, and prophets will always tell us God’s messages. We do not need Jeremiah! So let’s slander him and not pay attention to anything he says.”

19 Then I prayed, “Yahweh, please pay attention to me! Listen to what my opponents are saying about me.

20 They should not be doing harmful things to me when I have done good things for them. But they are trying to kill me. Remember that I once stood in your presence and pleaded with you to do good things for them, and I tried to persuade you not to punish them even though you were very angry with them.

21 So, let their children starve! Let their enemies kill them in battle! Let their wives lose their children and their husbands! Let their older men die from a plague, and let the young men die in battle!

22 Cause people to scream in terror in their homes when you suddenly send a raiding enemy army against them! Let all of this happen to them because they want to kill me. It is as though they have dug a pit for me to fall into and have set hidden snares on my path.

23 But Yahweh, you yourself know everything they have planned to do to try to kill me. Do not forgive the wrong things they have done but instead let them fall down in defeat before you. Deal with them when you are angry!”

Judah will be like a jar that someone smashes

19 Yahweh gave me another message. He said, “Go and purchase a clay jar from someone who makes pottery. Then take some of the elders of the people and some of the older priests with you. 2 Go out of the city to Son of Hinnom Valley, which is near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Then give them this message that I will tell you. 3 Say to them, ‘You kings of Judah and you people of Jerusalem, listen to what Yahweh says! Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, the God of Israel, says this: Pay attention! I am about to bring a terrible disaster on this place. It will be so terrible that everyone who hears about it will be shocked. 4 I will do this because the people have abandoned me. They have turned this place into a place for worshiping foreign gods and they have burned incense here to other gods that neither they, nor their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah have known about. They have filled this place with the blood of innocent people whom they have killed. 5 They have built worship sites to honor Baal, and at those places they have burned their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal. I never commanded them to do that, I never told them to do that, and I never even thought about anyone doing that.

6 So pay attention, because a time will come when people will no longer call this place Topheth or Son of Hinnom Valley. Instead, they will call it the Valley of Slaughter. 7 In this place I will ruin the plans of the people that live in Jerusalem and the rest of Judah. I will allow their enemies to kill many of them with swords and allow those who want to kill them to succeed. Then I will let their dead bodies lie on the ground where all the scavenging birds and wild animals will eat them. 8 I will completely destroy this city so that it becomes a desolate place that people despise. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will gasp when they see all the destruction. 9 I will allow your enemies who want to kill you to surround the city so tightly and for so long that the food will all run out. Then the people in the city will become so desperately hungry that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters, and each person will eat the flesh of his neighbor.’

10 Then Yahweh said to me, “After you say all of that, smash the jar while the people who came with you are watching. 11 Then say to them, ‘Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, says this: Just as someone smashes a potter’s jar so that no one can ever put it back together, I will smash this people and this city in a similar way. People will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room to bury anyone else. 12 That is what I will do to this place and to the people who live here,’ declares Yahweh. ‘I will allow your enemies to desecrate this city like king Josiah caused Topheth to be a place that was unfit for people to worship me in. 13 Your enemies will desecrate the houses throughout Jerusalem and the palaces of the kings of Judah as King Josiah did to Topheth. That includes every house where you burned incense on the rooftops to honor the stars that you worshiped, and where you poured out wine as an offering to your gods.’ ”

14 Then I, Jeremiah returned from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent me to tell them that message. I went and stood in the courtyard of Yahweh’s temple and said this to all the people who had gathered there: 15 “Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, the God of Israel, says this: ‘Pay attention! I am about to bring on this city and on all the towns around it every disaster that I said I would, because the people have stubbornly refused to listen to what I have said to them.’ ”

20 Pashhur, whose father was Immer, was a priest and he was the chief supervisor in Yahweh’s temple. He heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. 2 So Pashhur beat me, Jeremiah, the prophet, and then put me in the stocks at the Upper Benjamin Gate in Yahweh’s temple. 3 The next day, Pashhur released me, Jeremiah from the stocks. Then I, Jeremiah said to him, “Yahweh is not going to call you Pashhur anymore. Instead, he is going to call you Terror on Every Side.

4 Yahweh will call you this because this is what he says regarding you: ‘Pay attention! I am going to make you a source of terror to yourself and to all your friends. You will watch as your enemies kill your friends with swords. I will let the king of Babylon conquer all the people of Judah. His soldiers will take some of them to Babylon, and they will kill others with swords. 5 I will enable their soldiers to take away everything valuable from this city—all its wealth, all the goods people worked hard to produce, and all its precious things—along with all the treasures that belonged to the kings of Judah. The enemies will plunder everything and carry it to Babylon. 6 And as for you, Pashhur, they will take you and everyone in your household, as captives to Babylon. You will die there, and people will bury you there—they will bury you and all your friends there, the ones you gave false prophecies to.’ ”

7 Then I, Jeremiah, said, “Yahweh, you persuaded me to become your prophet,

and I let you persuade me.

You were stronger than I was,

and you won.

Now people ridicule me throughout the day;

everyone makes fun of me.

8 Whenever I speak your messages, I shout, ‘Yahweh is going to cause you to experience violence and destruction!’

So because I tell people your messages,

they insult me throughout the day.

9 Sometimes I think to myself, “I will stop mentioning Yahweh,

and I will stop speaking messages from him.”

However, when I try to remain silent, his message became like a fire in my inner being,

that I cannot hold back.

I grow weary of trying to contain it,

and I cannot hold back from speaking Yahweh’s messages).

10 I hear many people whispering about me,

saying, “He is the man who proclaims that there will be things that cause us to be terrified all around us! We must tell the authorities what he is saying!”

All the people who pretended to be my friends

are watching for me to make a mistake.

They say, ‘Maybe we can trick him into saying something wrong,

and then we can defeat him and get our revenge on him.’

11 However, Yahweh is with me, and he defends me powerfully.

So those who persecute me will stumble and will not defeat me.

They will feel very ashamed because they did not succeed,

and no one will ever forget how God disgraced them.

12 Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies,

you examine those who do what is right.

You know what everyone thinks and what motivates them.

Allow me to see you punish those people who want to harm me,

because I have told you about my case and asked you to help me.”

13 Sing to Yahweh!

Praise Yahweh!

Because he rescues needy people

from the power of wicked people.

14 I curse the day my mother gave birth to me!

May no one celebrate that day.

15 As for the man who brought the news to my father,

and made him very happy by saying,

“Your wife has given birth to a baby boy”,

I wish someone would curse that man.

16 May Yahweh destroy that man as he did to the cities he destroyed in the past, without acting mercifully toward them.

May that man hear people crying out in distress in the morning

and hear enemy soldiers shout their battle cries at noon.

17 I say this because he did not kill me before I came out of my mother’s womb.

If he had, I would have died inside my mother

and never come out.

18 I wish that I had not come out of my mother’s womb

so that I would not have to experience all these difficult things that cause me to feel so miserable,

and so that I would not come to the end of my life feeling disgraced.

21 Yahweh gave me another message when King Zedekiah of Judah sent a man named Pashhur, whose father was Malkijah, and a priest named Zephaniah, whose father was Maaseiah, to talk to me. They pleaded with me, saying, 2 “The army of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is attacking Judah so please speak to Yahweh for us. Ask him if he will help us. Perhaps he will force Nebuchadnezzar’s army to leave by performing a miracle for us, like the miracles he performed previously.”

3 I replied to them, “Go back to King Zedekiah. Tell him this, 4 ‘This is what Yahweh, the God whom we Israelites worship, says: “Pay attention! I will cause your weapons to be useless in fighting against the king of Babylon and his army that is outside the walls of Jerusalem, attacking. I will enable them to enter into the center of this city. 5 I myself will fight against your army with my very great power, because I am very angry with you. 6 I will send a very terrible plague on the people of this city, and on their domestic animals, and many of them will die.’ 7 Yahweh says, ‘After those things occur, I will enable the army of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and your other enemies, and the others who seek to kill you, to capture you, you Zedekiah who rule in Judah, and your officials, and all the other people who remain in this city and have not died from the plague, from enemy soldiers, and from starvation. I will allow Nebuchadnezzar’s army to slaughter those of you who remain; they will not act mercifully toward you at all or spare people.’

8 And tell this to this people: ‘Yahweh says that you must pay careful attention and decide whether you want to choose the way that will result in your dying or choose the way that will result in your staying alive. 9 Everyone who remains in Jerusalem will die because enemy soldiers will kill them or they will die from starvation or from diseases. But those who surrender to the army of Babylon that is surrounding your city will remain alive. They will escape dying. 10 This will happen because I, Yahweh, have decided to cause the inhabitants of this city to experience disasters and not to experience something good. I have decided to allow the army of the king of Babylon to capture this city and his army will destroy it completely by fire.’ ”

11 Yahweh also told me to say this to the family of the king of Judah: “Listen to this message from Yahweh. 12 This is what he says to you descendants of King David:

‘Every day, make fair decisions for the people whom you judge.

Help those whom people have robbed.

Rescue them from robbers and abusers.

If you do not do that,

I will be angry and punish you with a fire that will be impossible to extinguish,

because of all the sins that you have committed.

13 Know that I will oppose you people of Jerusalem,

you who live on top of a rocky hill above the valley.

I will oppose you people who boast, saying,

“No one can attack us and break through our defenses.”

14 I will punish you for your wicked deeds like you deserve to be punished;

It will be as though I will light a fire in your forests

that will burn up everything around you.’ ”

22 Yahweh gave me this message: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and tell him this message. 2 Say, ‘Listen to what Yahweh has to say to you, king of Judah, you who rule in succession to King David. You, your officials, and your people who enter through these gates must listen. 3 This is what Yahweh says: Treat people fairly and do what is right. Rescue anyone who has had his things stolen. Rescue that person from the power of the one oppressing them. Do not mistreat foreigners who are living among you, or orphans, or widows. Do not harm anyone, and do not kill innocent people in this place. 4 If you carefully obey these commands, then there will always be a king from David’s royal line ruling in Jerusalem. Each king with his officials and his people will ride through the gates of this palace in chariots and on horses. 5 However, if you refuse to obey these commands, then I, Yahweh, swear by my own name that this palace will become a pile of rubble.’ ””

6 This is what Yahweh says about the palace of the king of Judah:

“I value this palace as much as I value the forests in the region of Gilead

and the mountains in Lebanon.

Nevertheless, I will certainly make it

a desolate place where no one lives.

7 I will send enemy troops to destroy it;

each soldier with his own weapons.

They will chop down the fine cedar beams

and throw them into the fire.

8 People from many nations will pass by the ruins of this city and ask one another, ‘Why did Yahweh do this to such a great city?’ 9 Other people will answer, ‘He did it because his people stopped obeying the agreement they had made with Yahweh their God and instead worshiped and served other gods.’ ”

10 Do not weep for king Josiah who died; do not mourn for him. Instead, weep bitterly for King Jehoahaz, his son, because he will go away into exile, weep because he will never come back and he will never see his homeland again.

11 Yahweh says this about Shallum son of Josiah, king of Judah, who became king after his father Josiah and who was captured and taken away from here to Babylon: “He will never come back here again. 12 He will die in the place where his enemies took him, and he will never return to this land.”

13 Yahweh says, “Terrible things will happen to King Jehoiakim!

He does not act fairly when he forces people to build his palace.

He forces his neighbors to work for nothing

and does not pay them for their labor.

14 He says, “I will force my workers to build me a huge palace

with large, spacious rooms on the upper level.

I will make them cut out windows for me,

and panel the walls with boards made of cedar wood,

and paint it bright red.”

15 Having a beautiful palace with cedar paneling does not make a king great! Your father Josiah had plenty of things to eat and drink, but he always treated people fairly and did what was right. Because of that, things went well for him.

16 Josiah made sure that judges treated poor and needy people fairly, and things went well because of that. That is what it means to truly know me.” That is what Yahweh declares.

17 “But Jehoiakim, you pay attention to nothing and desire nothing except getting things by cheating people and shedding the blood of innocent people, and oppressing people, and you use force to get what you want.

18 Therefore, this is what Yahweh says about Jehoiakim the son of King Josiah, king of Judah:

“When he dies people will not mourn for him, saying,

‘How sad, my brother! How sad, my sister!’

People will not mourn for him, saying,

‘How sad, my master! How sad for him who was majestic!’

19 People will bury his corpse the way they dispose of a dead donkey:

they will drag his body out

and throw it beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

20 You people of Jerusalem, go up to Lebanon and cry out!

Shout loudly in Bashan!

Cry out from Abarim,

because your enemies have destroyed all the nations that were your political allies.

21 I warned you when things were going well for you,

but you said, ‘I will not listen.’

You have behaved this way ever since you were young,

for you have never obeyed me.

22 I will punish all your leaders;

it will be as though they have been blown away by the wind.

Your enemies will take your political allies away as prisoners.

Then you will certainly feel deeply ashamed and everyone will despise you

because of all the evil things you have done.

23 You people of Jerusalem who think you are as safe as a bird nesting in the cedar trees that grow in Lebanon,

people will greatly pity you when you begin to suffer,

you will suffer severely as a woman does when she is giving birth!”

24 Yahweh declares, “As surely as I am alive, even if you, Coniah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a ring on my finger that shows that I am the king, I would still pull you off. 25 You are afraid of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his huge army, because they are wanting to kill you. I will enable them to capture you. 26 I will expel you and your mother who gave birth to you into another land where neither of you were born, and you will both die there. 27 Neither of you will ever return to this land that you both will greatly desire to return to.”

28 People say, “Coniah will be like a broken pot that people despise or a vessel which no one wants.

Enemy soldiers will force him and his children to go to a foreign land that they are not familiar with.”

29 People of this land, people of this land, people of this land,

listen to what Yahweh says!

30 This is what Yahweh says:

“Write down in the record about the kings of Judah that it will be as though this man has no descendants,

and that he has not been successful during his lifetime,

because none of his children will become king

and rule in succession of King David as king over Judah.”

God will punish the evil leaders

23 Yahweh declares, “Terrible things will happen to the leaders of my people, who were supposed to guide and care for my people like shepherds guide and care for their sheep. Terrible things will happen to the leaders of my people because they have scattered and harmed my people instead of caring for them. 2 So this is what I, Yahweh, the God whom the Israelite people worship, say to those leaders: ‘Instead of taking care of my people as a shepherd does for his sheep, you have scattered them and driven them away, and you have not paid attention to them. Know that I will make sure to punish you for the evil things that you have done.’ ” This is what Yahweh declares. 3 “Then I myself will gather the rest of my people from all the countries where I have driven them. I will bring them back to their own land, where they will have many children and increase in number. 4 I will appoint other leaders for my people who will take care of them. My people will never again be afraid or dismayed, and none of them will go missing.” This is what Yahweh declares.

5 Yahweh also declares,

“Listen! A time is coming when I will appoint from David’s family line a righteous descendant.

He will rule as king and will act wisely.

He will do what is just and right throughout the land.

6 At the time he begins to reign, Yahweh will rescue the people of Judah,

and the people of Israel will live securely.

People will call him by this name:

‘Yahweh makes us right with him.’ ”

7 “So listen! A time is coming,” Yahweh declares, “when people who are making a solemn promise will no longer say, ‘I promise, as surely as Yahweh lives, the one who brought the Israelite people up from the land of Egypt.’ 8 Instead, they will say, ‘I promise, as surely as Yahweh lives, the one who brought us Israelite people back to our own land when he led us from the land to the northeast and from all the other countries where he had exiled us.’ Then they will live in their own land again.”

9 This is what I, Jeremiah, say about the prophets:

My mind is greatly distressed.

My entire body is shaking.

I am so overcome by strong feelings that I am less capable of doing things,

like a man who has had too much wine.

I feel this way because of Yahweh,

and because of his holy words.

10 The land is full of people who commit adultery.

Because Yahweh has placed a curse on the land, the land dries up

and the pastures in the wilderness have dried up.

The people do evil things,

and those who have powerful positions use them to do things that are not right.

11 Yahweh declares, “Even the prophets and the priests have turned away from me.

I have found them doing evil things even in my temple.

12 So I will make the events of their life be as though they were walking on slippery paths in the dark.

I will ensure that they experience hardships so that it will be as though I am pushing them down and they are falling,

when I cause disastrous things to happen to them

at the time when I punish them.” This is what I Yahweh declare.

13 “I saw that the prophets in Samaria were doing something that was wrong:

They were prophesying, saying that Baal gave them the messages they were proclaiming

and they were deceiving my people, the Israelites.

14 And now I have seen the prophets in Jerusalem doing something horrible:

They commit adultery

and habitually tell lies.

They have encouraged people who do evil

so that no one stops doing evil things.

All of them have become as wicked as the people of Sodom,

and the people of Jerusalem have become as wicked as the people of Gomorrah.”

15 So this is what Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, says about those prophets:

“Know that I will cause them to suffer so that it will be as if they will eat bitter things

and drink poisoned water,

because on account of the lies being prophesied by the prophets of Jerusalem,

wicked things are done throughout the whole land.”

16 This is what Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, says:

“Do not pay any attention to what those prophets say to you,

because they are only deceiving you.

They tell you about things that they imagined in their own minds.

Yahweh did not give them those messages.

17 They keep saying to people who despise me,

‘Yahweh says that things will go well for you.’

They tell everyone who stubbornly does whatever he wants to do,

‘Nothing bad will happen to you.’

18 But none of these prophets has ever been in a council meeting where Yahweh gave his private counsel

or seen and heard what Yahweh said.

None of them has paid attention to what Yahweh said and truly listened.

19 Look! Yahweh has sent out a furious storm.

It whirls down

on the heads of wicked people.

20 Yahweh will not stop being angry

until he has completely accomplished everything that he has planned.

In the future,

you will clearly understand this.

21 “I did not send these prophets,

yet they rushed to tell people their messages.

I did not speak to them,

yet they kept on prophesying.

22 If they had sought my counsel,

then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,

and they would have caused my people to stop doing evil things.”

23 Yahweh also declares, “I am not a God who is only nearby. I am also a God who is far away.

24 No one can hide in a secret place where I cannot see him.” Yahweh declares, “I am present everywhere, in heaven and on the earth.” This is what Yahweh declares.

25 “I have heard what those prophets have said, the ones who claim to speak for me but prophesy lies. They say, ‘I had a dream that God gave me! I had a dream that God gave me!!’ 26 These prophets will not stop prophesying false things that come from their own deceitful minds. 27 They plan to make my people forget about me by telling their dreams to one another, just as their ancestors forgot about me when they started to worship Baal.

28 Allow any prophet who has a dream to tell his dream. However, those who have messages that truly come from me must speak my messages faithfully. As straw and grain are certainly very different, so messages from false prophets are certainly very different from messages from true prophets.” It is I, Yahweh, who declare this. 29 “My message has great power. It is as though my messages burn like a fire; they strike people’s inner beings like someone strikes a rock with a hammer and smashes it into pieces.” I Yahweh declare this.

30 “So, I oppose all those prophets who steal messages from each other and then claim those messages came from me,” I Yahweh declare this. 31 “I oppose those prophets who steal messages from each other and then use their tongues to say, ‘Yahweh declares this,’ ” This is what I Yahweh declare. 32 “I am against the ones who prophesy lying dreams. Those people tell their lying dreams to my people and their lies and careless behavior cause my people to stop obeying me. I did not command them to speak those things or send them to my people and as a result they certainly do not help my people.” This is what I, Yahweh declare.

33 Yahweh said to me, Jeremiah, “When any of these people or a prophet or a priest asks you, ‘What message has Yahweh given you?’ you must reply to them, ‘What burden? Yahweh declares that he will forsake you!’ 34 And if any prophet or priest or Israelite person says, ‘I have a message from Yahweh,’ I will punish that person and his family. 35 What you should ask each other is, ‘What is Yahweh’s answer?’ or ‘What has Yahweh said?’ 36 But stop saying ‘I have a message from Yahweh,’ because when each person claims his own words are a message from Yahweh, he distorts the message of the living God, Yahweh, the commander of the heavenly armies, our God. 37 This is what you should ask each prophet: ‘What has Yahweh answered you?’ or ‘What has Yahweh said?’ 38 But if he says, ‘I have a message from Yahweh,’ then I Yahweh say this: ‘Because you have kept saying, “I have a message from Yahweh,” even though I told you, “You must not say, ‘I have a message from Yahweh.’ ” 39 So I Yahweh, will certainly forget about you and forsake you and this city that I gave to you and to your ancestors. I will expel you from my presence. 40 I will cause people to make fun of you forever. People will never forget that I caused you to be ashamed.’ ” ’ ”