The words of Hilkiah's son Jeremiah, who was one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.

"Go and announce to Jerusalem: "This is what the LORD says: "I remember the loyal devotion of your youth, your love as a bride. You followed me in the desert, in a land that was not planted.

Israel was consecrated to the LORD, she was the first fruits of his produce. All who devoured her became guilty and disaster came on them," declares the LORD.'"

"Is Israel a slave, or was he born a servant? Why then has he become plunder?

Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me," declares the Lord GOD.

Jerusalem, wash your evil from your heart so that you may be delivered. How long will you harbor evil schemes within you?

I looked at the earth, and it was formless and void, at the heavens, and there was no light there.

Were they ashamed because they did what was repugnant to God? They were not ashamed at all they don't even know how to blush! Therefore they'll fall with those who fall. When I punish them, they'll be brought down," says the LORD.

"Go to my place that was in Shiloh, where I first caused my name to dwell. See what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.

We waited for peace, but no good has come, for a time of healing, but instead there was terror.

I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I didn't know that they had devised schemes against me. They told themselves, "Let's destroy the tree with its fruit. Let's eliminate him from the land of the living, so his name won't be remembered again."

I went to the Euphrates and dug it up. I got the belt from the place where I had hidden it. The belt was ruined! It was not good for anything.

"Look up and see those who are coming from the north. Where is the flock that was given to you your beautiful sheep?

Have you completely rejected Judah? Do you despise Zion? Why have you struck us, so that there is no healing for us? We hoped for peace, but no good came, for a time of healing, but there was only terror.

So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was doing work at the potter's wheel.

But the vessel he was working on with the clay was ruined in the potter's hand. So he remade it into another vessel that seemed appropriate to him.

When the priest Pashhur, Immer's son, who was the officer in charge of the LORD's Temple heard Jeremiah prophesying these words,

Let the day on which I was born be cursed. Don't let the day on which my mother gave birth to me be blessed.

This message from the LORD came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Josiah's son Jehoiakim, king of Judah. (This was also the first year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.)

There was also a man named Uriah, Shemaiah's son from Kiriath-jearim, who prophesied in the LORD's name. He prophesied about this city and this land in words similar to those of Jeremiah.

King Jehoiakim, all his troops, and all the officials heard his words, and the king sought to kill him. Uriah heard about this and was afraid, so he fled and went to Egypt.

Yet because Shaphan's son Ahikam supported Jeremiah, he was not handed over to the people for them to kill.

The letter was sent by Shaphan's son Elasah and by Hilkiah's son Gemariah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in Babylon, and it said,

This is what the LORD says: "The people who survived the sword, found favor in the desert while Israel was seeking rest.

Indeed, after I turned away, then I repented. And after I came to understand, I slapped my forehead. I was both ashamed and humiliated because I bear the disgrace of my youth.'"

It won't be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD.

This is the message that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah. It was the eighteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard at the palace of the king of Judah

"Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard just as the LORD had said, and he told me, "Please buy my field in Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin because you have the right to possess it, and the right to redeem it belongs to you. Buy it for yourself.' So I knew that this was a message from the LORD.

The Chaldeans who are fighting against this city will come, set this city on fire, and burn it along with the houses on whose roofs incense was burned to Baal and liquid offerings were poured out to other gods in order to provoke me.

This message from the LORD came to Jeremiah a second time while he was still confined in the courtyard of the guard:

while the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah that were left, namely Lachish and Azekah. (They were the only fortified cities that remained among the cities of Judah.)

Each person was to set free his male and female slaves who were Hebrews, so that no Jewish person would enslave his brother.

You recently repented and did what was right in my eyes by proclaiming release for one another, and you made a covenant before me in the house that is called by my name.

I brought them to the LORD's Temple to the office of the descendants of Igdaliah's son Hanan, the man of God, which was next to the office of the officials, and which was above the office of Shallum's son Maaseiah, the keeper of the threshold.

In the ninth month of the fifth year of the reign of Josiah's son Jehoiakim, king of Judah, a fast was proclaimed in the LORD's presence in Jerusalem for all the people of Jerusalem, as well as all the people who were coming from the towns of Judah.

Then all the officials sent Nethaniah's son Jehudi, (who was also the grandson of Shelemiah and Cushi's great-grandson), to Baruch, who said, "Take the scroll that you read to the people and come." Neriah's son Baruch took the scroll with him and went to them.

The king was sitting in the winter palace in the ninth month and a stove was burning in front of him.

As Jehudi would read three or four columns, the king would cut it with a scribe's knife and throw it into the fire which was in the stove, until all the scroll was burned in the fire in the stove.

Now Jeremiah was still going in and out among the people since he had not yet been put in prison.

When the Chaldean army was leaving Jerusalem because of Pharaoh's army,

He was in the Gate of Benjamin, and chief officer Irijah, Shelemiah's son and the grandson of Hananiah, was there. He arrested Jeremiah the prophet, accusing him: "You are going over to the Chaldeans!"

So King Zedekiah gave the order, and they assigned Jeremiah to the courtyard of the guard. Each day they gave him a loaf of bread from the bakers' street until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.

Mattan's son Shephatiah, Pashhur's son Gedaliah, Shelemiah's son Jucal, and Malchijah's son Pashhur heard the words that Jeremiah was speaking to all the people:

So they threw Jeremiah into a cistern that belonged to the king's son Malchijah and was located in the courtyard of the guard. When they let Jeremiah down with ropes, because there was no water in the cistern only mud Jeremiah sank into the mud.

Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, a eunuch in the king's house, heard that Jeremiah had been put in the cistern. The king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate,

then you are to say to them, "I was presenting my request to the king that I not be taken back to the house of Jonathan to die there.'"

Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

This is how Jerusalem was captured: In the tenth month of the ninth year of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it.

On the ninth day of the fourth month, in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, the wall of the city was breached.

This message from the LORD came to Jeremiah while he was confined in the courtyard of the guard:

This is the message that came to Jeremiah from the LORD after Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had released him from Ramah, when he was bound in chains, along with all the exiles from Jerusalem and Judah who were being taken into exile in Babylon.

Now on the day after Gedaliah was killed, when as yet no one knew about it,

This is what the LORD says: "Look, I'm going to give Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies and into the hands of those seeking his life, just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, his enemy who was seeking his life."

To Egypt: Concerning the army of King Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, which was encamped by the Euphrates River at Carchemish and which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated in the fourth year of the reign of Josiah's son Jehoiakim, king of Judah.

Moab will be ashamed because of Chemosh just as the house of Israel was ashamed because of Bethel, their confidence.

Wasn't Israel an object of mocking for you? Wasn't he treated like a thief, so that whenever you spoke about him you shook your head in contempt?

"Israel is a scattered flock, driven out by lions. The first to devour him was the king of Assyria, and then afterward King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon gnawed his bones.

Babylon was a golden cup in the LORD's hand, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine, therefore the nations have gone mad.

Suddenly, Babylon fell down and was shattered. Wail for her! Bring balm for her wound, perhaps she will be healed.

This is the message that Jeremiah the prophet delivered to Neriah's son Seraiah, the grandson of Mahseiah, when he went with King Zedekiah of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Seraiah was the quartermaster.

Zedekiah was 21 years old when he began to rule, and he ruled for 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.

The city was under siege until the eleventh year of the reign of King Zedekiah.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine became so severe that there was no food for the people of the land.

The wall of the city was broken through, and all the soldiers fled, leaving the city at night through the gate between the two walls next to the king's garden, even though the Chaldeans were all around the city. They went in the direction of the Arabah.

In the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month it was the nineteenth year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard who served the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.

There was too much bronze to weigh in the two pillars, the one sea, the twelve bronze oxen that were under the sea, and the stands which King Solomon had made for the LORD's Temple.

Each of the pillars was twelve cubits high and its circumference twelve cubits. It was hollow and about a handbreadth thick.

On each pillar was a capital of bronze, and the height of each capital was five cubits. Latticework and pomegranates, all of bronze, were all around the capital. And the second pillar was like this, including the pomegranates.

As for his living expenses, a regular allowance was given him daily by the king of Babylon as long as he lived, until the day of his death.