Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles

¹This is the text of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the others Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

²(This was after King Jeconiah,the queen mother, the court officials, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metalsmiths had been exiled from Jerusalem.)

³The letter was entrusted to Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It stated:

⁴This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:

⁵“Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce.

⁶Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease.

⁷Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

⁸For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “Do not be deceived by the prophets and diviners among you, and do not listen to the dreams you elicit from them.

⁹For they are falsely prophesying to you in My name; I have not sent them, declares the LORD.”

¹⁰For this is what the LORD says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.

¹¹For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.

¹²Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.

¹³You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

¹⁴I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore you from captivityand gather you from all the nations and places to which I have banished you, declares the LORD. I will restore you to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

¹⁵Because you may say, “The LORD has raised up for us prophets in Babylon,”

¹⁶this is what the LORD says about the king who sits on David’s throne and all the people who remain in this city, your brothers who did not go with you into exile—

¹⁷this is what the LORD of Hosts says:“I will send against them sword and famine and plague, and I will make them like rotten figs, so bad they cannot be eaten.

¹⁸I will pursue them with sword and famine and plague. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth—a curse, a desolation, and an object of scorn and reproach among all the nations to which I banish them.

¹⁹I will do this because they have not listened to My words, declares the LORD, which I sent to them again and againthrough My servants the prophets. And neither have you exiles listened, declares the LORD.”

²⁰So hear the word of the LORD, all you exiles I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.

²¹This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says about Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying to you lies in My name: “I will deliver them to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will kill them before your very eyes.

²²Because of them, all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon will use this curse: ‘May the LORD make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire!’

²³For they have committed an outrage in Israel by committing adultery with the wives of their neighbors and speaking lies in My name, which I did not command them to do. I am He who knows, and I am a witness, declares the LORD.”

The Message to Shemaiah

²⁴You are to tell Shemaiah the Nehelamite that

²⁵this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “In your own name you have sent out letters to all the people of Jerusalem, to the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah, and to all the priests. You said to Zephaniah:

²⁶‘The LORD has appointed you priest in place of Jehoiada, to be the chief officer in the house of the LORD, responsible for any madman who acts like a prophet—you must put him in stocks and neck irons.

²⁷So now, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth, who poses as a prophet among you?

²⁸For he has sent to us in Babylon, claiming: Since the exile will be lengthy, build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat their produce.’”

²⁹(Zephaniah the priest, however, had read this letter to Jeremiah the prophet.)

³⁰Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:

³¹“Send a message telling all the exiles what the LORD says concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite. Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you—though I did not send him—and has made you trust in a lie,

³²this is what the LORD says: ‘I will surely punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants. He will have no one left among this people, nor will he see the good that I will bring to My people, declares the LORD, for he has preached rebellion against the LORD.’”

Jacob Returns to Bethel

¹Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and settle there. Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

²So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves and change your garments.

³Then let us arise and go to Bethel. I will build an altar there to God, who answered me in my day of distress. He has been with me wherever I have gone.”

⁴So they gave Jacob all their foreign gods and all their earrings, and Jacob buried them under the oaknear Shechem.

⁵As they set out, a terror from God fell over the surrounding cities, so that they did not pursue Jacob’s sons.

⁶So Jacob and everyone with him arrived in Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan.

⁷There Jacob built an altar, and he called that place El-bethel,because it was there that God had revealed Himself to Jacob as he fled from his brother.

⁸Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oakbelow Bethel. So Jacob named it Allon-bacuth.

⁹After Jacob had returned from Paddan-aram,God appeared to him again and blessed him.

¹⁰And God said to him, “Though your name is Jacob,you will no longer be called Jacob. Instead, your name will be Israel.” So God named him Israel.

¹¹And God told him, “I am God Almighty.Be fruitful and multiply. A nation—even a company of nations—shall come from you, and kings shall descend from you.

¹²The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.”

¹³Then God went up from the place where He had spoken with him.

¹⁴So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where God had spoken with him—a stone marker—and he poured out a drink offering on it and anointed it with oil.

¹⁵Jacob called the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.

Benjamin Born, Rachel Dies

¹⁶Later, they set out from Bethel, and while they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was difficult.

¹⁷During her severe labor, the midwife said to her, “Do not be afraid, for you are having another son.”

¹⁸And with her last breath—for she was dying—she named him Ben-oni.But his father called him Benjamin.

¹⁹So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).

²⁰Jacob set up a pillar on her grave; it marks Rachel’s tomb to this day.

The Sons of Jacob

²¹Israel again set out and pitched his tent beyond the Tower of Eder.

²²While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard about it.Jacob had twelve sons:

²³The sons of Leah were Reuben the firstborn of Jacob, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.

²⁴The sons of Rachel were Joseph and Benjamin.

²⁵The sons of Rachel’s maidservant Bilhah were Dan and Naphtali.

²⁶And the sons of Leah’s maidservant Zilpah were Gad and Asher.These are the sons of Jacob, who were born to him in Paddan-aram.

The Death of Isaac

²⁷Jacob returned to his father Isaac at Mamre, near Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had stayed.

²⁸And Isaac lived 180 years.

²⁹Then he breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people, old and full of years. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

A Prophecy against Zedekiah

¹This 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 the other nations were fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding cities.

²The LORD, the God of Israel, told Jeremiah to go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and tell him that this is what the LORD says: “Behold, I am about to deliver this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down.

³And you yourself will not escape his grasp, but will surely be captured and delivered into his hand. You will see the king of Babylon eye to eye and speak with him face to face; and you will go to Babylon.

⁴Yet hear the word of the LORD, O Zedekiah king of Judah. This is what the LORD says concerning you: You will not die by the sword;

⁵you will die in peace. As spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who preceded you, so people will burn spices for you and lament, ‘Alas, O master!’ For I Myself have spoken this word, declares the LORD.”

⁶In Jerusalem, then, Jeremiah the prophet relayed all these words to Zedekiah king of Judah

⁷as the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and the remaining cities of Judah—against Lachish and Azekah. For these were the only fortified cities remaining in Judah.

Freedom for Hebrew Slaves

⁸After King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim liberty, the word came to Jeremiah from the LORD

⁹that each man should free his Hebrew slaves, both male and female, and no one should hold his fellow Jew in bondage.

¹⁰So all the officials and all the people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their menservants and maidservants and no longer hold them in bondage. They obeyed and released them,

¹¹but later they changed their minds and took back the menservants and maidservants they had freed, and they forced them to become slaves again.

¹²Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,

¹³“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your forefathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying:

¹⁴Every seventh year, each of you must free his Hebrew brother who has sold himself to you. He may serve you six years, but then you must let him go free. But your fathers did not listen or incline their ear.

¹⁵Recently you repented and did what pleased Me; each of you proclaimed freedom for his neighbor. You made a covenant before Me in the house that bears My Name.

¹⁶But now you have changed your minds and profaned My name. Each of you has taken back the menservants and maidservants whom you had set at liberty to go wherever they wanted, and you have again forced them to be your slaves.

¹⁷Therefore this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed Me; you have not proclaimed freedom, each man for his brother and for his neighbor. So now I proclaim freedom for you, declares the LORD—freedom to fall by sword, by plague, and by famine! I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

¹⁸And those who have transgressed My covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces.

¹⁹The officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the pieces of the calf,

²⁰I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who seek their lives. Their corpses will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

²¹And I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials into the hands of their enemies who seek their lives, to the army of the king of Babylon that had withdrawn from you.

²²Behold, I am going to give the command, declares the LORD, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it, capture it, and burn it down. And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

A Prayer for Deliverance

¹The nations, O God, have invaded Your inheritance;they have defiled Your holy templeand reduced Jerusalem to rubble.

²They have given the corpses of Your servantsas food to the birds of the air,the flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the earth.

³They have poured out their blood like waterall around Jerusalem,and there is no one to bury the dead.

⁴We have become a reproach to our neighbors,a scorn and derision to those around us.

⁵How long, O LORD?Will You be angry forever?Will Your jealousy burn like fire?

⁶Pour out Your wrath on the nationsthat do not acknowledge You,on the kingdomsthat refuse to call on Your name,

⁷for they have devoured Jacoband devastated his homeland.

⁸Do not hold past sins against us;let Your compassion come quickly,for we are brought low.

⁹Help us, O God of our salvation,for the glory of Your name;deliver us and atone for our sins,for the sake of Your name.

¹⁰Why should the nations ask,“Where is their God?”Before our eyes, make known among the nationsYour vengeance for the bloodshed of Your servants.

¹¹May the groans of the captives reach You;by the strength of Your arm preserve those condemned to death.

¹²Pay back into the laps of our neighborssevenfold the reproach they hurled at You, O Lord.

¹³Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture,will thank You forever;from generation to generationwe will declare Your praise.