I said, ¹  “Lord, you know how I suffer. ²  Take thought of me and care for me. Pay back for me those who have been persecuting me. Do not be so patient with them that you allow them to kill me. Be mindful of how I have put up with their insults for your sake.

You are the one in whom Israel may find hope. ¹  All who leave you will suffer shame. Those who turn away from you ²  will be consigned to the nether world. ³  For they have rejected you, the Lord, the fountain of life. ⁴ 

The houses in Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled by dead bodies ¹  just like this place, Topheth. For they offered sacrifice to the stars ²  and poured out drink offerings to other gods on the roofs of those houses.’”

But the Lord is with me to help me like an awe-inspiring warrior. ¹  Therefore those who persecute me will fail and will not prevail over me. They will be thoroughly disgraced because they did not succeed. Their disgrace will never be forgotten.

that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ¹  ‘The forces at your disposal ²  are now outside the walls fighting against King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians ³  who have you under siege. I will gather those forces back inside the city. ⁴ 

You may feel as secure as a bird nesting in the cedars of Lebanon. But oh how you ¹  will groan ²  when the pains of judgment come on you. They will be like those of a woman giving birth to a baby. ³ 

The Lord who rules over all ¹  says to the people of Jerusalem: ²  “Do not listen to what those prophets are saying to you. They are filling you with false hopes. They are reporting visions of their own imaginations, not something the Lord has given them to say. ³ 

I, the Lord, affirm ¹  that I am opposed to those prophets who dream up lies and report them. They are misleading my people with their reckless lies. ²  I did not send them. I did not commission them. They are not helping these people at all. ³  I, the Lord, affirm it!” ⁴ 

Those who have been killed by the Lord at that time will be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. They will not be mourned over, gathered up, or buried. ¹  Their dead bodies will lie scattered over the ground like manure.

But you should take careful note of this: If you put me to death, you will bring on yourselves and this city and those who live in it the guilt of murdering an innocent man. For the Lord has sent me to speak all this where you can hear it. That is the truth!” ¹ 

So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ¹  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ²  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ³  subject to the king of Babylon.’

“For the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹  says, ‘Do not let the prophets or those among you who claim to be able to predict the future by divination ²  deceive you. And do not pay any attention to the dreams that you are encouraging them to dream.

I will chase after them with war, ¹  starvation, and disease. I will make all the kingdoms of the earth horrified at what happens to them. I will make them examples of those who are cursed, objects of horror, hissing scorn, and ridicule among all the nations where I exile them.

‘The defenders of the city will go out and fight with the Babylonians. ¹  But they will only fill those houses and buildings with the dead bodies of the people that I will kill in my anger and my wrath. ²  That will happen because I have decided to turn my back on ³  this city on account of the wicked things they have done. ⁴ 

I will punish those people who have violated their covenant with me. I will make them like the calf they cut in two and passed between its pieces. ¹  I will do so because they did not keep the terms of the covenant they made in my presence. ² 

“Your royal Majesty, those men have been very wicked in all that they have done to the prophet Jeremiah. They have thrown him into a cistern and he is sure to die of starvation there because there is no food left in the city. ¹ 

So King Zedekiah made a secret promise to Jeremiah and sealed it with an oath. He promised, ¹  “As surely as the Lord lives who has given us life and breath, ²  I promise you this: I will not kill you or hand you over to those men who want to kill you.” ³ 

Now the cistern where Ishmael threw all the dead bodies of those he had killed was a large one ¹  that King Asa had constructed as part of his defenses against King Baasha of Israel. ²  Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled it with dead bodies. ³ 

They said to him, “Please grant our request ¹  and pray to the Lord your God for all those of us who are still left alive here. ²  For, as you yourself can see, there are only a few of us left out of the many there were before. ³ 

The population of Egypt is like a vast, impenetrable forest. But I, the Lord, affirm ¹  that the enemy will cut them down. For those who chop them down will be more numerous than locusts. They will be too numerous to count. ²