Jeremiah 34:1-35:19

BBE^{(i) 1} The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army, and all the kingdoms of the earth which were under his rule, and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and all its towns, saying, ² The Lord, the God of Israel, has said, Go and say to Zedekiah, king of Judah, This is what the Lord has said: See, I will give this town into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will have it burned with fire: ³ And you will not get away from him, but will certainly be taken and given up into his hands; and you will see the king of Babylon, eye to eye, and he will have talk with you, mouth to mouth, and you will go to Babylon. ⁴ But give ear to the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah, king of Judah; this is what the Lord has said about you: Death will not come to you by the sword: ⁵ You will come to your end in peace; and such burnings as they made for your fathers, the earlier kings before you, will be made for you; and they will be weeping for you and saying, Ah lord! for I have said the word, says the Lord. ⁶ Then Jeremiah the prophet said all these things to Zedekiah, king of Judah, in Jerusalem, ⁷ When the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the towns of Judah which had not been taken, against Lachish and against Azekah; for these were the last of the walled towns of Judah. ⁸ The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after King Zedekiah had made an agreement with all the people in Jerusalem, to give news in public that servants were to be made free; ⁹ That every man was to let his Hebrew man-servant and his Hebrew servant-girl go free; so that no one might make use of a Jew, his countryman, as a servant: ¹⁰ And this was done by all the rulers and the people who had taken part in the agreement, and every one let his man-servant and his servant-girl go free, not to be used as servants any longer; they did so, and let them go. ¹¹ But later, they took back again the servants and the servant-girls whom they had let go free, and put them again under the yoke as servants and servant-girls. ¹² For this reason the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, ¹³ The Lord, the God of Israel, has said, I made an agreement with your fathers on the day when I took them out of Egypt, out of the prison-house, saying, ¹⁴ At the end of seven years every man is to let go his countryman who is a Hebrew, who has become yours for a price and has been your servant for six years; you are to let him go free: but your fathers gave no attention and did not give ear. ¹⁵ And now, turning away from evil, you had done what is right in my eyes, giving a public undertaking for every man to make his neighbour free; and you had made an agreement before me in the house which is named by my name: ¹⁶ But again you have put shame on my name, and you have taken back, every one his man-servant and his servant-girl, whom you had sent away free, and you have put them under the yoke again to be your servants and servant-girls. ¹⁷ And so the Lord has said, You have not given ear to me and undertaken publicly, every man to let loose his countryman and his neighbour: see, I undertake to let loose against you the sword and disease and need of food; and I will send you wandering among all the kingdoms of the earth. ¹⁸ And I will give the men who have gone against my agreement and have not given effect to the words of the agreement which they made before me, when the ox was cut in two and they went between the parts of it, ¹⁹ The rulers of Judah and the rulers of Jerusalem, the unsexed servants and the priests and all the people of the land who went between the parts of the ox, ²⁰ Even these I will give up into the hands of their haters and into the hands of those who have designs against their lives: and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth. ²¹ And Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his rulers I will give into the hands of their haters and into the hands of those who have designs against their lives, and into the hands of the king of Babylon's army which has gone away from you. ²² See, I will give orders, says the Lord, and make them come back to this town; and they will make war on it and take it and have it burned with fire: and I will make the towns of Judah waste and unpeopled. ^{35 1} The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, ² Go into the house of the Rechabites, and have talk with them, and take them into the house of the Lord, into one of the rooms, and give them wine. ³ Then I took Jaazaniah, the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons and all the Rechabites; ⁴ And I took them into the house of the Lord, into the room of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was near the rulers' room, which was over the room of Maaseiah, the son of Shallum, the keeper of the door; ⁵ And I put before the sons of the Rechabites basins full of wine and cups, and I said to them, Take some wine. ⁶ But they said, We will take no wine: for Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, gave us orders, saying, You are to take no wine, you or your sons, for ever: ⁷ And you are to make no houses, or put in seed, or get vine-gardens planted, or have any: but all your days you are to go on living in tents, so that you may have a long life in the land where you are living as in a strange country. ⁸ And we have kept the rules of Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, in everything which he gave us orders to do, drinking no wine all our days, we and our wives and our sons and our daughters; ⁹ Building no houses for ourselves, having no vine-gardens or fields or seed: ¹⁰ But we have been living in tents, and have done everything which Jonadab our father gave us orders to do. ¹¹ But when Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, came up into the land, we said, Come, let us go to Jerusalem, away from the army of the Chaldaeans and from the army of the Aramaeans: and so we are living in Jerusalem. ¹² Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, ¹³ This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said: Go and say to the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, Is there no hope of teaching you to give ear to my words? says the Lord. ¹⁴ The orders which Jonadab, the son of Rechab, gave to his sons to take no wine, are done, and to this day they take no wine, for they do the orders of their father: but I have sent my words to you, getting up early and sending them, and you have not given ear to me. ¹⁵ And I have sent you all my servants the prophets, getting up early and sending them, saying, Come back, now, every man from his evil way, and do better, and go not after other gods to become their servants, and you will go on living in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers: but your ears have not been open, and you have not given attention to me. ¹⁶ Though the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have done the orders of their father which he gave them, this people has not given ear to me: ¹⁷ For this reason the Lord, the God of armies, the God of Israel, has said, See, I will send on Judah and on all the people of Jerusalem all the evil which I said I would do to them: because I sent my words to them, but they did not give ear; crying out to them, but they gave no answer. ¹⁸ But to the Rechabites Jeremiah said, This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said: Because you have done the orders of Jonadab your father, and have kept his rules, and done everything as he gave you orders to do it; ¹⁹ For this reason the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said, Jonadab, the son of Rechab, will never be without a man to take his place before me.