King Zedekiah’s request, God’s reply
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📚✭This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD, when King Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of Melchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, to him saying, 2 📚✭“Please consult the LORD for us, for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is making war against us. Perhaps the LORD will deal with us in accordance with all his wonderful deeds, so that he may depart from us”. 3 ✭Then Jeremiah said to them, “This is what you shall say to Zedekiah: 4 📚✭‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel: See, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, with which you are fighting against the king of Babylon and against the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside the walls, and I will gather them in the middle of this city. 5 📚✭And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, in anger and in fury and in great wrath. 6 📚And I will strike the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast. They will die from a great plague. 7 📚✭And afterwards, says the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah and his servants and the people and those who are left in this city from the plague, from the sword and from the famine, into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hands of their enemies, and into the hands of those who seek their life. And he will strike them with the edge of the sword. He will not spare them, or have pity, or have mercy.’
8 📚“And you shall say to this people, ‘Thus says the LORD: See, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death. 9 📚He who stays in this city will die by the sword and by the famine and by the plague, but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who are besieging you, will live, and will be to him like plunder. 10 📚For I have set my face against this city for disaster and not for good, says the LORD. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire.’
11 📚✭“And concerning the house of the king of Judah, say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD. 12 📚O house of David, thus says the LORD:
“‘Administer justice every morning,
and rescue the one who is plundered
out of the hands of the oppressor,
so that my fury does not go out
like fire and burn so that no one
can quench it,
because of the evil of your deeds.
13 📚✭See, I am against you,
O inhabitant of the valley and
rocky plain, says the LORD,
you who say, “Who will come down
against us?
Or who will enter our dwelling places?”
14 📚But I will punish you according
to the results of your deeds,
says the LORD;
and I will kindle a fire in its forest,
and it will devour everything around it.’ ”