But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.

Then Jeremiah left Topheth where the Lord had sent him to give that prophecy. He went to the Lord’s temple and stood in its courtyard and called out to all the people.

Cursed be the man who made my father very glad when he brought him the news that a baby boy had been born to him!

May that man be like the cities that the Lord destroyed without showing any mercy. May he hear a cry of distress in the morning and a battle cry at noon.

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

I will hand you over to those who want to take your life and of whom you are afraid. I will hand you over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his Babylonian soldiers.

Then I myself will regather those of my people who are still alive from all the countries where I have driven them. I will bring them back to their homeland. They will greatly increase in number.

“So I, the Lord, say: ‘A new time will certainly come. People now affirm their oaths with “I swear as surely as the Lord lives who delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt.”

How long will they go on plotting to make my people forget who I am through the dreams they tell one another? That is just as bad as what their ancestors did when they forgot who I am by worshiping the god Baal.

Let the prophet who has had a dream go ahead and tell his dream. Let the person who has received my message report that message faithfully. What is like straw cannot compare to what is like grain! I, the Lord, affirm it!

I will punish any prophet, priest, or other person who says “The Lord’s message is burdensome.” I will punish both that person and his whole family.’”

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.

One basket had very good-looking figs in it. They looked like those that had ripened early. The other basket had very bad-looking figs in it, so bad they could not be eaten.

I will bring such disaster on them that all the kingdoms of the earth will be horrified. I will make them an object of reproach, a proverbial example of disaster. I will make them an object of ridicule, an example to be used in curses. That is how they will be remembered wherever I banish them.

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

So the prophet Jeremiah spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the people who were living in Jerusalem.

So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand. I made all the nations to whom he sent me drink the wine of his wrath.

all the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon; all the kings of the coastlands along the sea;

Maybe they will pay attention and each of them will stop living the evil way they do. If they do that, then I will forgo destroying them as I had intended to do because of the wicked things they have been doing.

Tell them that the Lord says, ‘You must obey me! You must live according to the way I have instructed you in my laws.