Therefore they called these days Purim, because of the name Pur. Thus because of all the words of this letter, and of what they faced concerning this, and of what had happened to them,

to establish these days of Purim at their appointed times, just as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had imposed, and just as they had imposed on themselves and their offspring regulations of the fast and their lament.

Then his livestock came to be seven thousand sheep and goats and three thousand camels and five hundred pairs of oxen and five hundred female donkeys, and he had very many slaves, and that man was greater than all the people of the east.

{Then when} the days of the feast had run their course, {Job would send}, and he would sanctify them. Thus he would arise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings [according to] the number of all of them, because Job thought, "Perhaps my children have sinned and {cursed} God in their heart." This is what Job used to do {all the time}.

Thus Job's three friends heard of this calamity that had come upon him. So each set out from his [own] place: Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite. And they met together to come to console him and to comfort him.

So {I had to inherit} months of worthlessness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

If I had sinned, then you would be watching me, and you would not acquit me of my guilt.

I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been brought from [the] womb to the grave.

I smiled for them [when] they had no confidence [in anything], and they did not extinguish the light of my face.

{Have the people of my tent not said}, '{O that} someone had not been satisfied with his meat'?

{O that} {I had} someone hearing me! Here is my signature; let Shaddai answer me! {As for} [the] written communication [that] {my adversary} has written,

and {he became angry} at his three friends because they had not found an answer, and they had declared Job guilty.

Thus Elihu had waited for Job {to speak} because {they were older than he}.

So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite [and] Zophar the Naamathite went and did just as Yahweh had told them, and {Yahweh accepted Job's prayer}.

Then Yahweh returned Job's fortune when he prayed to him on behalf of his friends. Thus Yahweh increased {all that Job had twice as much as before}.

So all his brothers and all his sisters and all [those who] had known him {before} came to him, and they ate bread with him in his house and showed sympathy to him and comforted him for all the disaster that Yahweh had brought upon him. Then each one gave to him one piece of money, and each one [gave to him] one ornamental ring of gold.

So Yahweh blessed Job's latter days more than his beginning. {Thus he had} fourteen thousand sheep and goats and six thousand camels and a thousand pair of oxen and a thousand female donkeys.

{And he had} seven sons and three daughters.

But as for me, I had said in my prosperity, "I shall not be moved ever."

If we had forgotten the name of our God, or had spread out our hands [in prayer] to a foreign god,

There {they are very fearful} [where] no fear had been, because God has scattered the bones of him who encamps [against] you. You have put [them] to shame, because God has rejected them.

So I say, "{Oh, that} I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest.

If I had considered evil in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped,

If I had said, "I will speak thus," behold, I would have acted treacherously against your children's generation.

They also forgot his deeds, and his wonders that he had shown them.

They had not yet turned aside from their craving, [while] their food [was] still in their mouth,

So he abandoned the dwelling place at Shiloh, [the] tent he had placed among humankind.

Then the Lord awoke like [one who had been] asleep, [awoke] like a warrior who had been drunk with wine.

If Yahweh had not been my help, my soul would soon have dwelt in silence.

when your ancestors tried me. They put me to the test, [even] though they had seen my work.

He sent his servant Moses, together with Aaron whom he had chosen.

Egypt was glad when they departed, because the fear of them had fallen upon them.

They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt,

So he said he would exterminate them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to reverse his wrath from destroying [them].

They did not exterminate the peoples, as Yahweh had commanded them,

Unless your law [had been] my delight, then I would have perished in my misery.

Too long my soul has had its dwelling near [one who] hates peace.

Be gracious to us, O Yahweh, be gracious to us, for long enough we have had our fill of contempt.

For long enough our soul has had its fill of the derision of the self-confident, the contempt of [the] arrogant.

"If [it had] not [been] Yahweh who was on our side," do let Israel say,

"If [it had] not [been] Yahweh who was on our side, when men rose up against us,

Before mountains had been shaped, before hills, I was brought forth.

When he had not yet made earth and fields, or the first dust of the world,

I acquired male slaves and female slaves, as well as children [born in my] house. I also had livestock, cattle, and flocks more than anyone who [was] before me in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, I saw the wicked being [honorably] buried, but those who came and went from the holy place were forgotten in the city, even though they had done so. This also [is] vanity!

{Scarcely had I passed} by them when I found him whom my {heart} loves. I held him and I would not let him go until I brought him to the house of my mother, into the bedroom chamber of she who conceived me.

I opened myself to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone; my heart sank when he turned away. I sought him, but I did not find him; I called him, but he did not answer me.

{Solomon had a vineyard} at Baal-hamon; {he entrusted his vineyard to the keepers}; {people paid a thousand silver [pieces] for its fruit}.

If Yahweh of hosts had not left us survivors, we would have been as few as Sodom, we would have become like Gomorrah.

What [is the] abundance of your sacrifices to me? says Yahweh. I have had enough [of] burnt offerings of rams and [the] fat [of] fattened animals and I do not delight in [the] blood of bulls and ram-lambs and goats.

Let me sing for my beloved a song of my love concerning his vineyard: {My beloved had a vineyard} on {a fertile hill}.

Seraphs [were] standing above him. {Each had six wings}: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, and in his hand [was] a hot coal he had taken from the altar with tongs.

The land was burned through the wrath of Yahweh of hosts, and the people became like fire fuel. {People had no compassion toward each other}.

And it shall happen on the day Yahweh gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and hard labor which {you had to perform},

at that time, Yahweh had spoken by the hand of Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, "Go and loosen the sackcloth from your loins, and take off your sandals from your feet," and he had done so, walking naked and barefoot.

All of your rulers have fled together without a bow; all of {you who were found} were captured. They were captured together; they had fled far away.

And Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that he had left from Lachish.

Look! I will cause [the] shadow of the steps, which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz with the sun, to turn backwards ten steps." And the sun turned back ten steps on the steps which it had gone down.

A writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he was sick and had recovered from his sickness:

At that time, Merodach-Baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and recovered.

And Hezekiah rejoiced over them and showed them his house of aromatic gum, the silver, gold, spices, good oil, all the house of his weapons, and all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing that Hezekiah had not shown them in his house or in all his dominion.

O that you had listened attentively to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

For he went up like shoot before him, and like root from dry ground. He had no form and no majesty that we should see him, and no appearance that we should take pleasure in him.

He made his grave with [the] wicked, and with [the] rich in his death, although he had done no violence, and [there was] no deceit in his mouth.

Yet they seek me day [by] day, and they desire the knowledge of my ways like a nation that {practiced} righteousness, and had not forsaken the judgment of its God; they ask me for {righteous judgments}, they desire the closeness of God.

I looked and behold, there was no person, and all of the birds of the sky had fled.

Were they ashamed, for they had committed a detestable thing? What's worse, they were not ashamed at all, and they did not know to feel humiliated. {Therefore} they will fall among [those who] fall; at the time of their punishment they will stumble," says Yahweh.

{Oh that I had} in the desert a place of overnight lodging for travelers, that I may leave my people and go from them, for all of them [are] adulterers, a band of traitors.

So I went and hid it by [the] Euphrates just as Yahweh had commanded me.

Then I went [to the] Euphrates and I dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it, and look, the loincloth was ruined; it was not good for anything.

{but only} "{As Yahweh lives}, who led up the {Israelites} from [the] land of [the] north, and from all the lands where he had driven them," for I will bring them back to their ground that I gave to their ancestors.

Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the courtyard of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people,

but '{As Yahweh lives}, who led up, and who brought the offspring of the house of Israel from [the] land [of the] north and from all the lands where he had driven them.' Then they will live in their land."

But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words [to] my people, and they would have caused them to turn from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds.

Yahweh showed me, and look, there were two baskets of figs placed {before} the temple of Yahweh--after Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had deported Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, with the officials of Judah, and the craftsmen, and the smiths, from Jerusalem and had brought them [to] Babylon.

The one basket [had] very good figs, like {early figs}, and the other basket [had] very bad figs that could not be eaten because of [their] bad quality.

{And then} as Jeremiah finished speaking all that Yahweh had commanded [him] to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, {saying}, "You will die!

[Did] Hezekiah, the king of Judah, and all Judah actually put him to death? [Was he] not in fear of Yahweh? And he entreated the face of Yahweh, and Yahweh relented of the disaster that he had spoken against them. But we [are] about to do great disaster to ourselves."

And these [are] the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the exiles, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem [to] Babylon,

where Zedekiah, the king of Judah, had confined him, {saying}, "Why [are] you prophesying, {saying}, 'Thus says Yahweh, "Look, I [am] going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it,

And they built the high places of Baal that [are] in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to present as offerings their sons and their daughters to Molech, which I had not commanded them, and it had not come to my {mind} to do this detestable thing in order to cause Judah to sin."

Thus says Yahweh: 'If my covenant [with] day and [with] night, [the] regulations of heaven and earth, I had not established,

And all the officials and all the people obeyed, who had entered into the covenant to let go each one his [male] slave and each one his female slave, not enslaving them again, and they obeyed and they let [them] go.

But {afterward} they turned back and they brought back the [male] slaves and the female slaves whom they had let go free, and they subdued them as [male] slaves and female slaves.

But you turned back and you profaned my name when you brought back each one his [male] slave and each one his female slave, whom you had let go free according to their desire, and you subdued them to be to you as [male] slaves and as female slaves.'

Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah, and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of Yahweh that he had spoken to him on {a scroll}.

And Micaiah told them all the words that he had heard at the reading aloud of Baruch from the scroll in the hearing of the people.

Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the son of Neriah, the secretary, and he wrote on it from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, had burned in the fire, and furthermore was added to them many words like these.

And king Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had made king, reigned as king in the land of Judah in place of Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim.

Now Jeremiah [was] coming and going out in the midst of the people and they had not put him [in] the house of imprisonment.

And the army of Pharaoh had come out from Egypt, and the Chaldeans, who were laying siege to Jerusalem, heard their report and they withdrew from Jerusalem.

And the officials were angry at Jeremiah and they struck him. And they put him [in] {prison}, [in] the house of Jonathan the secretary, for they had converted it to the {prison}.

When Ebed-melech the Cushite, {a eunuch} who [was] in the house of the king, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the pit--now the king [was] sitting at the Gate of Benjamin--

Then the rest of the people who were left in the city, and those deserting who had deserted to him, and the rest of the people who remained, Nebuzaradan, [the] captain of [the] guard, deported [to] Babylon.

And some of the poor people, {who had nothing}, Nebuzaradan, [the] captain of [the] guard, left in the land of Judah. And he gave them vineyards and fields on that day.

The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh after Nebuzaradan, [the] captain of [the] guard, had let him go from Ramah, {where he had been taken} bound in chains in the midst of all the exiles of Jerusalem and Judah who were being deported [to] Babylon.

While he still had not turned back, [Nebuzaradan] added, "Return to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has appointed [in an official position] over the towns of Judah, and stay with him in the midst of the people. Or to [wherever it is] right in your eyes to go, [then] go [there]." Then [the] captain of [the] guard gave him an allowance of provisions and a present, and let him go.

When all the commanders of the armies who [were] in the open country and their men heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam [in an official position] in the land, and that {he had put him in charge of} men, and women, and little children, and of the poor of the land, of [all those] who had not been deported [to] Babylon,