Then the Lord told me about ¹  some men from Anathoth ²  who were threatening to kill me. ³  They had threatened, ⁴  “Stop prophesying in the name of the Lord or we will kill you!” ⁵ 

The Lord told me, “Go and stand in the People’s Gate ²  through which the kings of Judah enter and leave the city. Then go and stand in all the other gates of the city of Jerusalem. ³ 

The Lord told Jeremiah, ¹  “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. ²  Take with you ³  some of the leaders of the people and some of the leaders ⁴  of the priests.

I told King Zedekiah of Judah the same thing. I said, ¹  “Submit ²  to the yoke of servitude to ³  the king of Babylon. Be subject to him and his people. Then you will continue to live.

For he has even sent a message to us here in Babylon. He wrote and told us, ¹  “You will be there a long time. Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce.”’” ² 

But they answered, “We do not drink wine because our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab commanded us not to. He told us, ‘You and your children must never drink wine.

“Get a scroll. ¹  Write on it everything I have told you to say ²  about Israel, Judah, and all the other nations since I began to speak to you in the reign of Josiah until now. ³ 

So Jeremiah summoned Baruch son of Neriah. Then Jeremiah dictated to Baruch everything the Lord had told him to say and Baruch wrote it all down in a scroll. ¹ 

So Baruch son of Neriah did exactly what the prophet Jeremiah had told him to do. He read what the Lord had said from the scroll in the temple of the Lord. ¹ 

King Zedekiah sent ¹  Jehucal ²  son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah ³  son of Maaseiah to the prophet Jeremiah. He told them to say, “Please pray to the Lord our God on our behalf.”

All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. ¹  He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. ²  They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation. ³ 

The Lord told Jeremiah, ¹  “Tell Baruch, ²  ‘The Lord says, “I am about to tear down what I have built and to uproot what I have planted. I will do this throughout the whole earth. ³ 

“Then ¹  a second beast appeared, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and there were three ribs ²  in its mouth between its teeth. ³  It was told, ⁴  ‘Get up and devour much flesh!’

“This is what he told me: ¹  ‘The fourth beast means that there will be a fourth kingdom on earth that will differ from all the other kingdoms. It will devour all the earth and will trample and crush it.

The vision of the evenings and mornings that was told to you is correct. ¹  But you should seal up the vision, for it refers to a time many days from now.”

Then I told her, “You must live with me many days; you must not commit adultery or have sexual intercourse with ¹  another man, and I also will wait for you.”

Hearing this, ¹  the men became even more afraid ²  and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men said this because they knew that he was trying to escape ³  from the Lord, ⁴  because he had previously told them. ⁵ )

He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord really wants from you: ¹  He wants you to ²  promote ³  justice, to be faithful, ⁴  and to live obediently before ⁵  your God.

Therefore he told me, “These signify the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by strength and not by power, but by my Spirit,’ ¹  says the Lord who rules over all.”

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with ¹  three measures ²  of flour until all the dough had risen.” ³