The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:

To whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his rule.

And it came again in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, up to the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah; till Jerusalem was taken away in the fifth month.

Then the Lord said to me, You have seen well: for I keep watch over my word to give effect to it.

These are the words of the Lord: What evil have your fathers seen in me that they have gone far from me, and, walking after what is false, have become false?

And in the skirts of your robe may be seen the life-blood of those who have done no wrong: ...

And the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, Have you seen what Israel, turning away from me, has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every branching tree, acting like a loose woman there.

And the Lord said to me, Israel in her turning away is seen to be more upright than false Judah.

Only be conscious of your sin, the evil you have done against the Lord your God; you have gone with strange men under every branching tree, giving no attention to my voice, says the Lord.

Come back, O children who are turned away, says the Lord; for I am a husband to you, and I will take you, one from a town and two from a family, and will make you come to Zion;

Put up a flag for a sign to Zion: go in flight so that you may be safe, waiting no longer: for I will send evil from the north, and a great destruction.

Your ways and your doings have made these things come on you; this is your sin; truly it is bitter, going deep into your heart.

A voice has come to my ears like the voice of a woman in birth-pains, the pain of one giving birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, fighting for breath, stretching out her hands, saying, Now sorrow is mine! for my strength is gone from me before the takers of life.

The fair and delicate one, the daughter of Zion, will be cut off by my hand.

Make war ready against her; up! let us go up when the sun is high. Sorrow is ours! for the day is turned and the shades of evening are stretched out.

Bows and spears are in their hands; they are cruel and have no mercy; their voice is like the thunder of the sea, and they go on horses; everyone in his place like men going to the fight, against you, O daughter of Zion.

O daughter of my people, put on haircloth, rolling yourself in the dust: give yourself to sorrow, as for an only son, with most bitter cries of grief; for he who makes waste will come on us suddenly.

Has this house, which is named by my name, become a hole of thieves to you? Truly I, even I, have seen it, says the Lord.

And they have put up the high place of Topheth in the valley of the son of Hinnom, burning their sons and their daughters there in the fire; a thing which was not ordered by me and never came into my mind.

For this cause, the days are coming, says the Lord, when it will no longer be named Topheth, or, The valley of the son of Hinnom, but, The valley of Death: for they will put the dead into the earth in Topheth till there is no more room.

And they will put them out before the sun and the moon and all the stars of heaven, whose lovers and servants they have been, after whom they have gone, to whom they have made prayers, and to whom they have given worship: they will not be put together or placed in the earth; they will be waste on the face of the earth.

And they have made little of the wounds of the daughter of Zion, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

The voice of the cry of the daughter of my people comes from a far land: Is the Lord not in Zion? is not her King in her? Why have they made me angry with their images and their strange gods which are no gods?

For a sound of weeping goes up from Zion, a cry, How has destruction come on us? we are overcome with shame because we have gone away from our land; he has sent us out from our house.

So I will have your skirts uncovered before your face, in order that your shame may be seen.

I have seen your disgusting acts, even your false behaviour and your cries of desire and your loose ways on the hills in the field. Unhappy are you, O Jerusalem, you have no desire to be made clean; how long will you be in turning back to me?

Their great men have sent their servants for water: they come to the holes and there is no water to be seen; they come back with nothing in their vessels; they are overcome with shame and fear, covering their heads.

Have you completely given up Judah? is your soul turned in disgust from Zion? why have you given us blows from which there is no one to make us well? we were looking for peace, but no good came; and for a time of well-being, but there was only a great fear.

We are conscious, O Lord, of our sin and of the wrongdoing of our fathers: we have done evil against you.

And I will make them a cause of fear to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and what he did in Jerusalem.

The mother of seven is without strength; her spirit is gone from her, her sun has gone down while it is still day: she has been shamed and overcome: and the rest of them I will give up to the sword before their haters, says the Lord.

And it will be, that when you say all these words to the people, then they will say to you, Why has the Lord done all this evil against us? what is our wrongdoing and what is our sin which we have done against the Lord our God?

And I will give them the reward of their evil-doing and their sin twice over; because they have made my land unclean, and have made my heritage full of the bodies of their unholy and disgusting things.

The sin of Judah is recorded with a pen of iron, and with the sharp point of a jewel it is cut on their hearts of stone, and on the horns of their altars for a sign to them:

Will the white snow go away from the top of Sirion? will the cold waters flowing from the mountains become dry?

But you, Lord, have knowledge of all the designs which they have made against my life; let not their evil-doing be covered or their sin be washed away from before your eyes: but let it be a cause of falling before you: so do to them in the time of your wrath.

And go out to the valley of the son of Hinnom, by the way into the door of broken pots, and there say in a loud voice the words which I will give you;

For this cause, see, a time is coming, says the Lord, when this place will no longer be named Topheth, or, The valley of the son of Hinnom, but, The valley of Death.

Now it came to the ears of Pashhur, the son of Immer the priest, who was chief in authority in the house of the Lord, that Jeremiah was saying these things;

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur, the son of Malchiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the priest, saying,

For this is what the Lord has said about Shallum, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who became king in place of Josiah his father, who went out from this place: He will never come back there again:

So this is what the Lord has said about Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah: They will make no weeping for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they will make no weeping for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory!

By my life, says the Lord, even if Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, was the ring on my right hand, even from there I would have you pulled off;

For the prophet as well as the priest is unclean; even in my house I have seen their evil-doing, says the Lord.

And I have seen ways without sense in the prophets of Samaria; they became prophets of the Baal, causing my people Israel to go wrong.

And in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a shocking thing; they are untrue to their wives, walking in deceit, and they make strong the hands of evil-doers, so that a man may not be turned back from his evil-doing: they have all become like Sodom to me, and its people like Gomorrah

For which of them has knowledge of the secret of the Lord, and has seen him, and given ear to his word? which of them has taken note of his word and given attention to it?

The Lord gave me a vision, and I saw two baskets full of figs put in front of the Temple of the Lord, after Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, had taken prisoner Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the chiefs of Judah, and the expert workmen and metal-workers from Jerusalem, and had taken them to Babylon.

The word which came to Jeremiah about all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah king of Judah; this was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon.

From the thirteenth year of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, even till this day, for twenty-three years, the word of the Lord has been coming to me, and I have given it to you, getting up early and talking to you; but you have not given ear.

And at that day, the bodies of those whom the Lord has put to death will be seen from one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth: there will be no weeping for them, their bodies will not be taken up or put to rest in the earth; they will be like waste on the face of the land.

When Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, first became king, this word came from the Lord, saying,

Micah the Morashtite, who was a prophet in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah, said to all the people of Judah, This is what the Lord of armies has said: Zion will become like a ploughed field, and Jerusalem will become a mass of broken walls, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the woodland.

And there was another man who was a prophet of the Lord, Uriah, the son of Shemaiah of Kiriath-jearim; he said against this town and against this land all the words which Jeremiah had said:

And Jehoiakim the king sent Elnathan, the son of Achbor, and certain men with him, into Egypt.

But Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, gave Jeremiah his help, so that he was not given into the hands of the people to be put to death.

When Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, first became king this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

And all the nations will be servants to him and to his son and to his son's son, till the time comes for his land to be overcome: and then a number of nations and great kings will take it for their use.

Which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, did not take away, when he took Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, a prisoner from Jerusalem to Babylon, with all the great men of Judah and Jerusalem;

And it came about in that year, when Zedekiah first became king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, that Hananiah, the son of Azzur the prophet, who came from Gibeon, said to Jeremiah in the house of the Lord, before the priests and all the people,

And I will let Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, come back to this place, with all the prisoners of Judah who went to Babylon, says the Lord: for I will have the yoke of the king of Babylon broken.

The prophet whose words are of peace, when his words come true, will be seen to be a prophet whom the Lord has sent.

By the hand of Elasah, the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,) saying,

This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said about Ahab, the son of Kolaiah, and about Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, who are saying to you what is false in my name: See, I will give them up into the hands of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and he will put them to death before your eyes.

Shemaiah the Nehelamite sent a letter in his name to Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the priest, saying,

For I will make you healthy again and I will make you well from your wounds, says the Lord; because they have given you the name of an outlaw, saying, It is Zion cared for by no man.

For there will be a day when those who get in the grapes on the hills of Ephraim will be crying, Up! let us go up to Zion to the Lord our God.

Is Ephraim my dear son? is he the child of my delight? for whenever I say things against him, I still keep him in my memory: so my heart is troubled for him; I will certainly have mercy on him, says the Lord.

And no longer will they be teaching every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Get knowledge of the Lord: for they will all have knowledge of me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord: for they will have my forgiveness for their evil-doing, and their sin will go from my memory for ever.

These are the words of the Lord, who has given the sun for a light by day, ordering the moon and stars for a light by night, who puts the sea in motion, causing the thunder of its waves; the Lord of armies is his name.

See, Hanamel, the son of Shallum, your father's brother, will come to you and say, Give the price and get for yourself my property in Anathoth: for you have the right of the nearest relation.

So Hanamel, the son of my father's brother, came to me, as the Lord had said, to the place of the armed watchmen, and said to me, Give the price and get my property which is in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin: for you have the nearest relation's right to the heritage; so get it for yourself. Then it was clear to me that this was the word of the Lord.

So I got for a price the property in Anathoth from Hanamel, the son of my father's brother, and gave him the money, seventeen shekels of silver;

And I gave the paper to Baruch, the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, before the eyes of Hanamel, the son of my father's brother, and of the witnesses who had put their names to the paper, and before all the Jews who were seated in the place of the armed watchmen.

Now after I had given the paper to Baruch, the son of Neriah, I made my prayer to the Lord, saying,

And they put up the high places of the Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, making their sons and their daughters go through the fire to Molech; which I did not give them orders to do, and it never came into my mind that they would do this disgusting thing, causing Judah to be turned out of the way.

And I will make them clean from all their sin, with which they have been sinning against me; I will have forgiveness for all their sins, with which they have been sinning against me, and with which they have done evil against me.

Then my agreement with my servant David may be broken, so that he no longer has a son to take his place on the seat of the kingdom; and my agreement with the Levites, the priests, my servants.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying,

Then I took Jaazaniah, the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons and all the Rechabites;

And I took them into the house of the Lord, into the room of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was near the rulers' room, which was over the room of Maaseiah, the son of Shallum, the keeper of the door;

But they said, We will take no wine: for Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, gave us orders, saying, You are to take no wine, you or your sons, for ever:

And we have kept the rules of Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, in everything which he gave us orders to do, drinking no wine all our days, we and our wives and our sons and our daughters;

The orders which Jonadab, the son of Rechab, gave to his sons to take no wine, are done, and to this day they take no wine, for they do the orders of their father: but I have sent my words to you, getting up early and sending them, and you have not given ear to me.

Though the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have done the orders of their father which he gave them, this people has not given ear to me:

For this reason the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said, Jonadab, the son of Rechab, will never be without a man to take his place before me.

Now it came about in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,

It may be that the people of Judah, hearing of all the evil which it is my purpose to do to them, will be turned, every man from his evil ways; so that they may have my forgiveness for their evil-doing and their sin.

Then Jeremiah sent for Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch took down from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord which he had said to him, writing them in a book.

And Baruch, the son of Neriah, did as Jeremiah the prophet gave him orders to do, reading from the book the words of the Lord in the Lord's house.

Now it came about in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, that it was given out publicly that all the people in Jerusalem, and all the people who came from the towns of Judah to Jerusalem, were to keep from food before the Lord.

Then Baruch gave a public reading of the words of Jeremiah from the book, in the house of the Lord, in the room of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan the scribe, in the higher square, as one goes in by the new doorway of the Lord's house, in the hearing of all the people.

And Micaiah, the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, after hearing all the words of the Lord from the book,

Went down to the king's house, to the scribe's room: and all the rulers were seated there, Elishama the scribe and Delaiah, the son of Shemaiah, and Elnathan, the son of Achbor, and Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, and Zedekiah, the son of Hananiah, and all the rulers.

So all the rulers sent Jehudi, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi, to Baruch, saying, Take in your hand the book from which you have been reading to the people and come. So Baruch, the son of Neriah, took the book in his hand and came down to them.

And the king gave orders to Jerahmeel, the king's son, and Seraiah, the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah, the son of Abdeel, to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet: but the Lord kept them safe.

For this reason the Lord has said of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, He will have no son to take his place on the seat of David: his dead body will be put out to undergo the heat of the day and the cold of the night.

Then Jeremiah took another book, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who put down in it, from the mouth of Jeremiah, all the words of the book which had been burned in the fire by Jehoiakim, king of Judah: and in addition a number of other words of the same sort.

And Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, became king in place of Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, made king in the land of Judah.

And Zedekiah the king sent Jehucal, the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah the priest, to the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Make prayer now to the Lord our God for us.