“People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. ¹  For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,” ²  says the Lord. “For ³  I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done.”

All the people and their leaders had agreed to this. They had agreed to free their male and female slaves and not keep them enslaved any longer. They originally complied with the covenant and freed them. ¹ 

“Every seven years each of you must free any fellow Hebrews who have sold themselves to you. After they have served you for six years, you shall set them free.” ¹  But your ancestors did not obey me or pay any attention to me.

Recently, however, you yourselves ¹  showed a change of heart and did what is pleasing to me. You granted your fellow countrymen their freedom and you made a covenant to that effect in my presence in the house that I have claimed for my own. ² 

But then you turned right around ¹  and showed that you did not honor me. ²  Each of you took back your male and female slaves whom you had freed as they desired, and you forced them to be your slaves again. ³ 

I took them to the Lord’s temple. I took them into the room where the disciples of the prophet Hanan son of Igdaliah stayed. ¹  That room was next to the one where the temple officers stayed and above the room where Maaseiah son of Shallum, one of the doorkeepers ²  of the temple, stayed.

Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about all the disaster I intend to bring on them, they will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ¹  If they do, I will forgive their sins and the wicked things they have done.” ² 

Perhaps then they will ask the Lord for mercy and will all stop doing the evil things they have been doing. ¹  For the Lord has threatened to bring great anger and wrath against these people.” ² 

When they had heard it all, ¹  they expressed their alarm to one another. ²  Then they said to Baruch, “We must certainly give the king a report about everything you have read!” ³ 

I will punish him and his descendants and the officials who serve him for the wicked things they have done. ¹  I will bring on them, the citizens of Jerusalem, ²  and the people of Judah all the disaster that I threatened to do to them. I will punish them because I threatened them but they still paid no heed.”’” ³ 

For even if you were to defeat all the Babylonian forces ¹  fighting against you so badly that only wounded men were left lying in their tents, they would get up and burn this city down.”’” ² 

An Ethiopian, Ebed Melech, ¹  a court official in the royal palace, heard that Jeremiah had been put ²  in the cistern. While the king was holding court ³  at the Benjamin Gate,

“So now the Lord, the God who rules over all, the God of Israel, ¹  asks, ‘Why will you do such great harm to yourselves? Why should every man, woman, child, and baby of yours be destroyed from the midst of Judah? Why should you leave yourselves without a remnant?

I will destroy Babylonia just like I did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns. No one will live there. ¹  No human being will settle in it,” says the Lord. ² 

Seventy men from the elders of the house of Israel ¹  (with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them) were standing in front of them, each with a censer in his hand, and fragrant ²  vapors from a cloud of incense were swirling upward.

He said to me, “Do you see, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in the chamber of his idolatrous images? ¹  For they think, ‘The Lord does not see us! The Lord has abandoned the land!’”

Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there ¹  at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, ²  were about twenty-five ³  men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, ⁴  facing east – they were worshiping the sun ⁵  toward the east!

Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women – wipe them out! But do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary!” So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple.

A wind ¹  lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the Lord’s temple that faces the east. There, at the entrance of the gate, I noticed twenty-five men. Among them I saw Jaazaniah son of Azzur and Pelatiah son of Benaiah, officials of the people. ² 

“Therefore I will judge each person according to his conduct, ¹  O house of Israel, declares the sovereign Lord. Repent ²  and turn from all your wickedness; then it will not be an obstacle leading to iniquity. ³