Gather your belongings together and prepare to leave the land, you people of Jerusalem who are being besieged.

Those are the terms that I charged your ancestors to keep when I brought them out of Egypt, that place which was like an iron-smelting furnace. I said at that time, “Obey me and carry out the terms of the agreement exactly as I commanded you. If you do, you will be my people and I will be your God.

So I went and buried them at Perath as the Lord had ordered me to do.

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah about the drought.

The people to whom they are prophesying will die through war and famine. Their bodies will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem and there will be no one to bury them. This will happen to the men and their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out on them the destruction they deserve.”

Their peaceful dwelling places will be laid waste by the fierce anger of the Lord.

I will fully satisfy the needs of those who are weary and fully refresh the souls of those who are faint.

Then they will say, ‘Under these conditions I can enjoy sweet sleep when I wake up and look around.’”

It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I delivered them from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them,” says the Lord.

“Judgment will come on the cities on the high plain: on Holon, Jahzah, and Mephaath,

How deserted will that once-famous city be, that city that was once filled with joy!

“Announce the news among the nations! Proclaim it! Signal for people to pay attention! Declare the news! Do not hide it! Say: ‘Babylon will be captured. Bel will be put to shame. Marduk will be dismayed. Babylon’s idols will be put to shame. Her disgusting images will be dismayed.

The Babylonians are all like lions roaring for prey. They are like lion cubs growling for something to eat.

The city remained under siege until Zedekiah’s eleventh year.

I brought you into a fertile land so you could enjoy its fruits and its rich bounty. But when you entered my land, you defiled it; you made the land I call my own loathsome to me.

Has a nation ever changed its gods (even though they are not really gods at all)? But my people have exchanged me, their glorious God, for a god that cannot help them at all!

So, this is what the Lord says: ‘I will assuredly make these people stumble to their doom. Parents and children will stumble and fall to their destruction. Friends and neighbors will die.’

Wild donkeys stand on the hilltops and pant for breath like jackals. Their eyes are strained looking for food, because there is none to be found.”

For the honor of your name, do not treat Jerusalem with contempt. Do not treat with disdain the place where your glorious throne sits. Be mindful of your covenant with us. Do not break it!

For whenever I prophesy, I must cry out, “Violence and destruction are coming!” This message from the Lord has made me an object of continual insults and derision.