Jeremiah 34

¹⁵For I am about to summon all the clans and kingdoms of the north,” declares the Lord. “Their kings will come and set up their thrones at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem. They will attack all her surrounding walls and all the other cities of Judah.

³⁷You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given sovereignty, power, strength, and glory.

³⁸Wherever the sons of men or beasts of the field or birds of the air dwell, He has given them into your hand and has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

⁵By My great power and outstretched arm, I made the earth and the men and beasts on the face of it, and I give it to whom I please.

⁶So now I have placed all these lands under the authority of My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. I have even made the beasts of the field subject to him.

¹So in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army. They encamped outside the city and built a siege wall all around it.

²And the city was kept under siege until King Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

²At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was imprisoned in the courtyard of the guard, which was in the palace of the king of Judah.

¹King Nebuchadnezzar, To the people of every nation and language who dwell in all the earth: May your prosperity be multiplied.

¹⁰For I have set My face against this city to bring disaster and not good, declares the Lord. It will be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, who will destroy it with fire.’

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.”

¹¹Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years.

¹²And he did evil in the sight of the Lord his God and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke for the Lord.

³For Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him, saying: “Why are you prophesying like this? You claim that the Lord says, ‘Behold, I am about to deliver this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.

¹This is what the Lord says: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and proclaim this message there,

²saying, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David—you and your officials and your people who enter these gates.

⁸Then the Chaldeans will return and fight against this city. They will capture it and burn it down.

⁹This is what the Lord says: Do not deceive yourselves by saying, ‘The Chaldeans will go away for good,’ for they will not!

⁴Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape from the hands of the Chaldeans, but he will surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and will speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye.

⁷‘After that,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officers, and the people in this city who survive the plague and sword and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword; he will not spare them or show pity or compassion.’

⁴Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,

⁵but the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and his whole army deserted him.

⁴When Zedekiah king of Judah and all the soldiers saw them, they fled. They left the city at night by way of the king’s garden, through the gate between the two walls, and they went out along the route to the Arabah.

⁵But the army of the Chaldeans pursued them and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho. They seized him and brought him up to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced judgment on him.

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.

¹⁸But if you do not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, then this city will be delivered into the hands of the Chaldeans. They will burn it down, and you yourself will not escape their grasp.’”

¹⁴And he was buried in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier that was full of spices and various blended perfumes; then they made a great fire in his honor.

¹⁸Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: “They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!’ They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!’

²⁸‘Now I will indeed gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace. Your eyes will not see all the calamity that I will bring on this place and on its people.’” So they brought her answer back to the king.

⁴⁶At this, King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, paid homage to Daniel, and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him.

²⁰The Lord’s anointed, the breath of our life, was captured in their pits. We had said of him, “Under his shadow we will live among the nations.”

¹⁹This continued day after day until two full years had passed. Finally, his intestines came out because of his disease, and he died in severe pain. And his people did not make a fire in his honor as they had done for his fathers.

²⁰Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He died, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

¹⁸So Samuel told him everything and did not hide a thing from him. “He is the Lord,” replied Eli. “Let Him do what is good in His eyes.”

¹⁶“Stop!” exclaimed Samuel. “Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.” “Tell me,” Saul replied.

¹⁷And Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, have you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel

²⁷For I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole will of God.

¹⁴But Micaiah said, “As surely as the Lord lives, I will speak whatever the Lord tells me.”

⁴because John had been telling him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.”

⁷But speak My words to them, whether they listen or refuse to listen, for they are rebellious.

³Therefore Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent word to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish, and Debir king of Eglon, saying,

³⁵Jarmuth, Adullam, Socoh, Azekah,

⁵Announce in Judah, proclaim in Jerusalem, and say: “Blow the ram’s horn throughout the land. Cry aloud and say, ‘Assemble yourselves and let us flee to the fortified cities.’

¹³In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah.

¹⁴So Hezekiah king of Judah sent word to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand from me.” And the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

⁵Rehoboam lived in Jerusalem, and he built up cities for defense in Judah.

⁶He built up Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa,

¹²Then the cities of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to which they have been burning incense, but these gods certainly will not save them in their time of disaster.

¹⁰So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.

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.

¹⁷Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people that they would be the Lord’s people. He also made a covenant between the king and the people.

²And he went up to the house of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as the priests and the prophets—all the people small and great—and in their hearing he read all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord.

³So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments, decrees, and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.

³⁹If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.

⁴⁰Let him stay with you as a hired worker or temporary resident; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee.

¹The Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners,

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,

¹⁵For I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing for which they should have put me in this dungeon.”

¹¹So the two of them showed themselves to the outpost of the Philistines, who exclaimed, “Look, the Hebrews are coming out of the holes in which they were hiding!”

¹²If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you must set him free.

⁷All nations will serve him and his son and grandson, until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings will enslave him.

⁸On that day, declares the Lord of Hosts, I will break the yoke off their necks and tear off their bonds, and no longer will strangers enslave them.

¹⁶Then the officials and all the people told the priests and prophets, “This man is not worthy of death, for he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God!”

¹⁰When the officials of Judah heard these things, they went up from the king’s palace to the house of the Lord and sat there at the entrance of the New Gate.

¹³Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

¹⁰Yet in spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the Lord.

¹¹And the Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than unfaithful Judah.

¹²he went down to the scribe’s chamber in the king’s palace, where all the officials were sitting: Elishama the scribe, Delaiah son of Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Achbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah, and all the other officials.

⁴Then the officials said to the king, “This man ought to die, for he is discouraging the warriors who remain in this city, as well as all the people, by speaking such words to them; this man is not seeking the well-being of these people, but their ruin.”

²⁰If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, only to be entangled and overcome by it again, their final condition is worse than it was at first.

²¹It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn away from the holy commandment passed on to them.

¹¹When the sentence for a crime is not speedily executed, the hearts of men become fully set on doing evil.

⁴³When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it.

⁴⁴Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ On its return, it finds the house vacant, swept clean, and put in order.

¹¹As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

⁸Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people. Then I will let your people go, that they may sacrifice to the Lord.”

³⁴When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart—he and his officials.

³⁵So Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses.

¹⁷For the Lord our God brought us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and performed these great signs before our eyes. He also protected us throughout our journey and among all the nations through which we traveled.

⁸He sent them a prophet, who told them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

²The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.

³He did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with all of us who are alive here today.

³²It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

²⁷Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then you can tell us everything the Lord our God tells you; we will listen and obey.”

⁷Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people, who replied, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”

⁸So Moses took the blood, splattered it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

¹²If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you must set him free.

⁷And the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king.

⁸Just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.

¹³Yet through all His prophets and seers, the Lord warned Israel and Judah, saying, “Turn from your wicked ways and keep My commandments and statutes, according to the entire Law that I commanded your fathers and delivered to you through My servants the prophets.”

¹⁴But they would not listen, and they stiffened their necks like their fathers, who did not believe the Lord their God.

²²But Solomon did not consign any of the Israelites to slavery, because they were his men of war, his servants, his officers, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and cavalry.

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

⁶Let us buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the chaff with the wheat!”

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

³So the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments, decrees, and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, and to carry out the words of the covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant.

¹⁰and then come and stand before Me in this house, which bears My Name, and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue with all these abominations’?

¹¹Has this house, which bears My Name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Yes, I too have seen it, declares the Lord.

²⁹hereby join with their noble brothers and commit themselves with a sworn oath to follow the Law of God given through His servant Moses and to obey carefully all the commandments, ordinances, and statutes of the Lord our Lord.

¹¹Make and fulfill your vows to the Lord your God; let all the neighboring lands bring tribute to Him who is to be feared.

¹⁰⁶I have sworn and confirmed that I will keep Your righteous judgments.

¹²You must not swear falsely by My name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

²⁴But if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and practices iniquity, committing the same abominations as the wicked, will he live? None of the righteous acts he did will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness and sin he has committed, he will die.

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

⁷You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who takes His name in vain.

²⁰Now if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. If you did not warn him, he will die in his sin, and the righteous acts he did will not be remembered. And I will hold you responsible for his blood.

¹¹“I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from following Me and has not carried out My instructions.” And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all that night.

²For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

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.

²⁵The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them in one direction but flee from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

⁷Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.

¹⁰So they hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the fury of the king subsided.

¹³For judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁰So Abram brought all these to Him, split each of them down the middle, and laid the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half.

⁷But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant; there they were unfaithful to Me.

²If a man or woman among you in one of the towns that the Lord your God gives you is found doing evil in the sight of the Lord your God by transgressing His covenant

¹⁶If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from this good land He has given you.”

¹Put the ram’s horn to your lips! An eagle looms over the house of the Lord, because the people have transgressed My covenant and rebelled against My law.

¹⁷When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, behold, a smoking firepot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the halves of the carcasses.

¹⁸On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates—

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,

³Her princes are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves, leaving nothing for the morning.

⁴Her prophets are reckless, faithless men. Her priests profane the sanctuary; they do violence to the law.

²⁷Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives for dishonest gain.

²⁸Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord God says,’ when the Lord has not spoken.

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.)

¹Woe is me! For I am like one gathering summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster to eat, no early fig that I crave.

²The godly man has perished from the earth; there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt one another with a net.

¹²You have carried out the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under all of heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.

³³The corpses of this people will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to scare them away.

⁷And in this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, by the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

⁴“They will die from deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried, but will lie like dung on the ground. They will be finished off by sword and famine, and their corpses will become food for the birds of the air and beasts of the earth.”

¹⁷Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds flying overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God,

¹⁸so that you may eat the flesh of kings and commanders and mighty men, of horses and riders, of everyone slave and free, small and great.”

⁴Anyone belonging to Baasha who dies in the city will be eaten by dogs, and anyone who dies in the field will be eaten by the birds of the air.”

²¹Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the people of Anathoth who are seeking your life and saying, “You must not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand.”

⁶There at Riblah the king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and he also killed all the nobles of Judah.

²⁴The captain of the guard also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest of second rank, and the three doorkeepers.

²⁵Of those still in the city, he took a court official who had been appointed over the men of war, as well as seven trusted royal advisers. He also took the scribe of the captain of the army, who had enlisted the people of the land, and sixty men who were found in the city.

¹⁶‘As surely as I live,’ declares the Lord God, ‘he will die in Babylon, in the land of the king who enthroned him, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke.

¹⁰There at Riblah the king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and he also killed all the officials of Judah.

¹⁸The captain of the guard also took away Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest of second rank, and the three doorkeepers.

¹⁹Of those still in the city, he took a court official who had been appointed over the men of war, as well as five royal advisors. He also took the scribe of the captain of the army, who had enlisted the people of the land, and sixty men who were found in the city.

⁵Pharaoh’s army had left Egypt, and when the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard the report, they withdrew from Jerusalem.

⁶Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet:

¹¹“And I will make Jerusalem a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

¹In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his entire army and laid siege to the city.

²And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached.

⁸The Chaldeans set fire to the palace of the king and to the houses of the people, and they broke down the walls of Jerusalem.

⁷Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled the city by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,

²²So the Lord could no longer endure the evil deeds and detestable acts you committed, and your land became a desolation, a horror, and an object of cursing, without inhabitant, as it is this day.

¹³He burned down the house of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.