Then Azariah ¹  son of Hoshaiah, Johanan son of Kareah, and other arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie! The Lord our God did not send you to tell us, ‘You must not go to Egypt and settle there.’

That is what will result from your making me angry by what you are doing. ¹  You are making me angry by sacrificing to other gods here in the land of Egypt where you live. You will be destroyed for doing that! You will become an example used in curses ²  and an object of ridicule among all the nations of the earth. ³ 

None of the Judean remnant who have come to live in the land of Egypt will escape or survive to return to the land of Judah. Though they long to return and live there, none of them shall return except a few fugitives.’” ¹ 

I, the Lord, promise that ¹  I will hand Pharaoh Hophra ²  king of Egypt over to his enemies who are seeking to kill him. I will do that just as surely as I handed King Zedekiah of Judah over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, his enemy who was seeking to kill him.’”

and say to them: “‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: On the day I chose Israel I swore ¹  to the descendants ²  of the house of Jacob and made myself known to them in the land of Egypt. I swore ³  to them, “I am the Lord your God.”

On that day I swore ¹  to bring them out of the land of Egypt to a land which I had picked out ²  for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, ³  the most beautiful of all lands.

Tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: “‘Look, I am against ¹  you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster ²  lying in the midst of its waterways, who has said, “My Nile is my own, I made it for myself.” ³ 

Therefore this is what the sovereign Lord says: Look, I am about to give the land of Egypt to King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon. He will carry off her wealth, capture her loot, and seize her plunder; it will be his army’s wages.

“Son of man, sing a lament for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him: “‘You were like a lion ¹  among the nations, but you are a monster in the seas; you thrash about in your streams, stir up the water with your feet, and muddy your ²  streams.

From there I will give back her vineyards to her, and turn the “Valley of Trouble” ¹  into an “Opportunity ²  for Hope.” There she will sing as she did when she was young, ³  when ⁴  she came up from the land of Egypt.

After they had gone, an ¹  angel of the Lord ²  appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod ³  is going to look for the child to kill him.”

“It will not be like the covenant ¹  that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.

It came between the Egyptian camp and the Israelite camp; it was a dark cloud ¹  and it lit up the night so that one camp did not come near the other ²  the whole night. ³ 

And who is like your people, Israel, a unique nation ¹  in the earth? Their God ²  went to claim ³  a nation for himself! You made a name for yourself by doing great and awesome deeds ⁴  when you drove out ⁵  nations before your people whom you had delivered from the Egyptian empire and its gods. ⁶ 

It ¹  will become a visual reminder in the land of Egypt of ²  the Lord who commands armies. When they cry out to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a deliverer and defender ³  who will rescue them.

That is, I will punish the Egyptians, the Judeans, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and all the desert people who cut their hair short at the temples. ¹  I will do so because none of the people of those nations are really circumcised in the Lord’s sight. ²  Moreover, none of the people of Israel ³  are circumcised when it comes to their hearts.” ⁴ 

Then all the men who were aware that their wives were sacrificing to other gods, as well as all their wives, answered Jeremiah. There was a great crowd of them representing all the people who lived in northern and southern Egypt. ¹  They answered,

I acted for the sake of my reputation, ¹  so that I would not be profaned before the nations among whom they lived, ²  before whom I revealed myself by bringing them out of the land of Egypt. ³ 

And the Lord did this ¹  on the next day; ²  all ³  the livestock of the Egyptians ⁴  died, but of the Israelites’ livestock not one died.

But against any of the Israelites not even a dog will bark ¹  against either people or animals, ²  so that you may know that the Lord distinguishes ³  between Egypt and Israel.’