So you go there the next time all the people of Judah come in from their towns to fast in the Lord’s temple. Read out loud where all of them can hear you what I told you the Lord said, which you wrote in the scroll.

Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.”

At that time Baruch went into the temple of the Lord. He stood in the entrance of the room of Gemariah the son of Shaphan who had been the royal secretary. That room was in the upper court near the entrance of the New Gate. There, where all the people could hear him, he read from the scroll what Jeremiah had said.

The prophet Jeremiah answered them, “Agreed! I will indeed pray to the Lord your God as you have asked. I will tell you everything the Lord replies in response to you. I will not keep anything back from you.”

They answered Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not do just as the Lord sends you to tell us to do.

We will obey what the Lord our God to whom we are sending you tells us to do. It does not matter whether we like what he tells us or not. We will obey what he tells us to do so that things will go well for us.”

If you people who remain in Judah do that, then listen to what the Lord says. The Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, ‘If you are so determined to go to Egypt that you go and settle there,

Jeremiah finished telling all the people all these things the Lord their God had sent him to tell them.

But that day belongs to the Lord God who rules over all. It is the day when he will pay back his enemies. His sword will devour them until its appetite is satisfied! It will drink their blood until it is full! For the Lord God who rules over all will offer them up as a sacrifice in the land of the north by the Euphrates River.

Because you did that, I, the Lord, affirm that a time is coming when I will make Rabbah, the capital city of Ammon, hear the sound of the battle cry. It will become a mound covered with ruins. Its villages will be burned to the ground. Then Israel will take back its land from those who took their land from them. I, the Lord, affirm it!

“When that time comes,” says the Lord, “the people of Israel and Judah will return to the land together. They will come back with tears of repentance as they seek the Lord their God.

“Sharpen your arrows! Fill your quivers! The Lord will arouse a spirit of hostility in the kings of Media. For he intends to destroy Babylonia. For that is how the Lord will get his revenge – how he will get his revenge for the Babylonians’ destruction of his temple.

The Babylonians broke the two bronze pillars in the temple of the Lord, as well as the movable stands and the large bronze basin called the “The Sea.” They took all the bronze to Babylon.

The Lord began to speak to him in the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon ruled over Judah.

The Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ But go to whomever I send you and say whatever I tell you.

Later the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I answered, “I see a branch of an almond tree.”

The Lord again asked me, “What do you see?” I answered, “I see a pot of boiling water; it is tipped toward us from the north.”

Israel was set apart to the Lord; they were like the first fruits of a harvest to him. All who tried to devour them were punished; disaster came upon them,” says the Lord.’”

This is what the Lord says: “What fault could your ancestors have possibly found in me that they strayed so far from me? They paid allegiance to worthless idols, and so became worthless to me.

You can try to wash away your guilt with a strong detergent. You can use as much soap as you want. But the stain of your guilt is still there for me to see,” says the Lord God.