24 After the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had carried away Yehoyakin (Jehoiakim, Heb. Yekonyah = Jeconiah), son of Yehudah’s King Yehoyakim (Jehoiakim), as well as Yehudah’s officials and Yerushalem’s craftsmen and metalsmiths, and had taken them to Babylon, Yahweh showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of his temple.[ref] 2 One basket of figs was very good like early, ripe figs, but the figs in the other basket were so bad that they weren’t edible. 3 Then Yahweh asked me, “Yirmeyah, what do you see?”

“Figs,” I replied. “Some figs that look very good, and others that are so bad they’re inedible.”

4 Then Yahweh gave me this message: 5 Yisrael’s god, Yahweh, says this: I’ll look favourably at the exiles from Yehudah just like those good figs, the exiles that I’ve sent out from this place to Babylonia. 6 I’ll give them my favour and restore them to this land. I’ll build them up, and not tear them down. I’ll plant them, and not uproot them. 7 Then I will give them a desire to know me, because I’m Yahweh. They’ll be my people and I will be their god, so they will turn to me wholeheartedly.

8 But Yahweh declares that just like those bad figs that are inedible will be discarded, I’ll act in that same way towards Yehudah’s King Zedekiah, along with his officials and the rest of Yerushalem who remain in this land or go to stay in the land of Egypt. 9 I’ll turn them into something horrifying—a disaster, right there in the sight of all the world’s kingdoms—a disgrace and a subject for proverbs, taunts, and curses in every place that I’ll drive them into. 10 I’ll send armies, famine, and disease against them until they’re destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.