For our leaders are stupid. They have not sought the Lord’s advice. So they do not act wisely, and the people they are responsible for have all been scattered.

What will you say when the Lord appoints as rulers over you those allies that you, yourself, had actually prepared as such? Then anguish and agony will grip you like that of a woman giving birth to a baby.

The Lord said, “So I will now let this wicked people know – I will let them know my mighty power in judgment. Then they will know that my name is the Lord.”

“But tell the people of Jerusalem that the Lord says, ‘I will give you a choice between two courses of action. One will result in life; the other will result in death.

For he will die in the country where they took him as a captive. He will never see this land again.”

I will force you and your mother who gave you birth into exile. You will be exiled to a country where neither of you were born, and you will both die there.

“Do you really think anyone can hide himself where I cannot see him?” the Lord asks. “Do you not know that I am everywhere?” the Lord asks.

So I will carry you far off and throw you away. I will send both you and the city I gave to you and to your ancestors out of my sight.

I will bring war, starvation, and disease on them until they are completely destroyed from the land I gave them and their ancestors.’”

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.