One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are the first to ripen; but the other basket had very bad figs, so rotten that they could not be eaten.

“Your own wickedness will discipline you,
And your desertion of the faith will punish you.
Know therefore that it is an evil and bitter thing
For you to abandon (reject) the Lord your God,
And for you to be indifferent to Me and dismiss the [reverent] fear of Me,” says the Lord God of hosts.

For I heard a cry like a woman in labor,
The anguish as of one giving birth to her first child,
The cry of the Daughter of Zion (Jerusalem), who gasps for breath,
Who stretches out her hands, saying,
“Woe is me [my judgment comes]! I faint [in fear] before the murderers.”

“But go now to My place which was in Shiloh [in Ephraim], where I first set My Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel.

In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah. (That was the same as the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon.)

I will first doubly repay and punish them for their wickedness and their sin [before I return them to their land], because they have profaned My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable idols and with their abominations.”

“From the day that they built it [during the reign of Solomon], even to this day, this city has been such a provocation of My anger and My wrath, that I must remove it from My sight,

I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and will rebuild them as they were at first.

the [sound of the] voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the [song-filled] voice of those who say,

“Give praise and thanks to the Lord of hosts,
For the Lord is good;
For His [steadfast] lovingkindness (mercy) endures forever”;

and of those who bring a thank offering into the house of the Lord. For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first,’ says the Lord.

Then they went into the court to the king, but they [first] put the scroll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe; then they reported all the words to the king.

“Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were on the first scroll which Jehoiakim the king of Judah burned.

"People of Judah, get out of Babylon quickly! Leave the land of Babylonia! Be the first to depart! Be like the male goats that lead the herd.

"The people of Israel are like scattered sheep which lions have chased away. First the king of Assyria devoured them. Now last of all King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has gnawed their bones.

In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah, on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month, Evil-Merodach, in the first year of his reign, pardoned King Jehoiachin of Judah and released him from prison.