For long ago I broke your yoke;
I tore off your chains.
You insisted, “I will not serve!”
On every high hill
and under every green tree
you lie down like a prostitute.

In the days of King Josiah the Lord asked me, “Have you seen what unfaithful Israel has done? She has ascended every high hill and gone under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

Only acknowledge your guilt—
you have rebelled against the Lord your God.
You have scattered your favors to strangers
under every green tree
and have not obeyed My voice.
This is the Lord’s declaration.

Cut off the hair of your sacred vow and throw it away. Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under His wrath.

You are to say this to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”

Gather up your belongings from the ground,
you who live under siege.

The cities of the Negev are under siege;
no one can help them.
All of Judah has been taken into exile,
taken completely into exile.

So now I have placed all these lands under the authority of My servant Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. I have even given him the wild animals to serve him.

“As for the nation or kingdom that does not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and does not place its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish by sword, famine, and plague”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“until through him I have destroyed it.

But as for the nation that will put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave it in its own land, and that nation will cultivate it and reside in it.” This is the Lord’s declaration.

I spoke to Zedekiah king of Judah in the same way: “Put your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, serve him and his people, and live!

For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says, ‘I have put an iron yoke on the neck of all these nations that they might serve King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and they will serve him. I have also put the wild animals under him.’”

The flocks will again pass under the hands of the one who counts them in the cities of the hill country, the cities of the Judean foothills, the cities of the Negev, the land of Benjamin—the cities surrounding Jerusalem and Judah’s cities, says the Lord.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, all his army, all the earthly kingdoms under his control, and all other nations were fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding cities:

So the king commanded Ebed-melech, the Cushite, “Take from here 30 men under your authority and pull Jeremiah the prophet up from the cistern before he dies.”

So Ebed-melech took the men under his authority and went to the king’s palace to a place below the storehouse. From there he took old rags and worn-out clothes and lowered them by ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern.

The city was under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

As for the two pillars, the one reservoir, and the 12 bronze bulls under the water carts that King Solomon had made for the Lord’s temple, the weight of the bronze of all these articles was beyond measure.