Jeremiah
34
- While Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and
all his army and all the kingdoms and peoples in the empire he ruled were
fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding towns, this word came to
Jeremiah from the LORD:
- "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel,
says: Go to Zedekiah king of Judah and tell him, 'This is what the LORD says:
I am about to hand this city over to the king of Babylon, and he will burn
it down.
- You will not escape from his grasp but will
surely be captured and handed over to him. You will see the king of Babylon
with your own eyes, and he will speak with you face to face. And you will
go to Babylon.
- "'Yet hear the promise of the LORD,
O Zedekiah king of Judah. This is what the LORD says concerning you: You will
not die by the sword;
- you will die peacefully. As people made a
funeral fire in honor of your fathers, the former kings who preceded you,
so they will make a fire in your honor and lament, "Alas, O master!"
I myself make this promise, declares the LORD.'"
- Then Jeremiah the prophet told all this to
Zedekiah king of Judah, in Jerusalem,
- while the army of the king of Babylon was
fighting against Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah that were still holding
out -- Lachish and Azekah. These were the only fortified cities left in Judah.
- The word came to Jeremiah from the LORD after
King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim
freedom for the slaves.
- Everyone was to free his Hebrew slaves, both
male and female; no one was to hold a fellow Jew in bondage.
- So all the officials and people who entered
into this covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves
and no longer hold them in bondage. They agreed, and set them free.
- But afterward they changed their minds and
took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again.
- Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:
- "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel,
says: I made a covenant with your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt,
out of the land of slavery. I said,
- 'Every seventh year each of you must free
any fellow Hebrew who has sold himself to you. After he has served you six
years, you must let him go free.' Your fathers, however, did not listen to
me or pay attention to me.
- Recently you repented and did what is right
in my sight: Each of you proclaimed freedom to his countrymen. You even made
a covenant before me in the house that bears my Name.
- But now you have turned around and profaned
my name; each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had set
free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves again.
- "Therefore, this is what the LORD says:
You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen.
So I now proclaim 'freedom' for you, declares the LORD -- 'freedom' to fall
by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms
of the earth.
- The men who have violated my covenant and
have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat
like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.
- The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court
officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the
pieces of the calf,
- I will hand over to their enemies who seek
their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and
the beasts of the earth.
- "I will hand Zedekiah king of Judah
and his officials over to their enemies who seek their lives, to the army
of the king of Babylon, which has withdrawn from you.
- I am going to give the order, declares the
LORD, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it,
take it and burn it down. And I will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one
can live there."
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