If you do not obey me, then I will do to this temple what I did to Shiloh. And I will make this city an example to be used in curses by people from all the nations on the earth.’”

“Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will cause people and animals to sprout up in the lands of Israel and Judah.

“Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

I will make a lasting covenant with them that I will never stop doing good to them. I will fill their hearts and minds with respect for me so that they will never again turn away from me.

“I, Lord, make the following promise: ‘I have made a covenant with the day and with the night that they will always come at their proper times. Only if you people could break that covenant

could my covenant with my servant David and my covenant with the Levites ever be broken. So David will by all means always have a descendant to occupy his throne as king and the Levites will by all means always have priests who will minister before me.

But later they had changed their minds. They had taken back their male and female slaves that they had freed and forced them to be slaves again.

Then they asked Baruch, “How did you come to write all these words? Do they actually come from Jeremiah’s mouth?”

The officials put the scroll in the room of Elishama, the royal secretary, for safekeeping. Then they went to the court and reported everything to the king.

The Lord spoke to Jeremiah after Jehoiakim had burned the scroll containing what Jeremiah had spoken and Baruch had written down.

There at Riblah the king of Babylon had Zedekiah’s sons put to death while Zedekiah was forced to watch. The king of Babylon also had all the nobles of Judah put to death.

When all the people that Ishmael had taken captive saw Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers with him, they were glad.

Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

He will demolish the sacred pillars in the temple of the sun in Egypt and will burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.”’”

I set a trap for you, Babylon; you were caught before you knew it. You fought against me. So you were found and captured.

He had Zedekiah’s eyes put out and had him bound in chains. Then the king of Babylon had him led off to Babylon and he was imprisoned there until the day he died.

The whole Babylonian army that came with the captain of the royal guard tore down the walls that surrounded Jerusalem.

“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and becomes another man’s wife, he may not take her back again. Doing that would utterly defile the land. But you, Israel, have given yourself as a prostitute to many gods. So what makes you think you can return to me?” says the Lord.

And you, Zion, city doomed to destruction, you accomplish nothing by wearing a beautiful dress, decking yourself out in jewels of gold, and putting on eye shadow! You are making yourself beautiful for nothing. Your lovers spurn you. They want to kill you.

I am as full of anger as you are, Lord, I am tired of trying to hold it in.” The Lord answered, “Vent it, then, on the children who play in the street and on the young men who are gathered together. Husbands and wives are to be included, as well as the old and those who are advanced in years.