The Recabite Family’s Good Example

35 During the time when Jehoiakim, son of King Josiah, was king of Judah, the Lord spoke this message to Jeremiah: ² “Go to the Recabite family^[a] and invite them to come to one of the side rooms of the Lord’s Temple. Offer them wine to drink.”

³ So I went to get Jaazaniah^[b] son of Jeremiah,^[c] who was the son of Habazziniah. And I got all of Jaazaniah’s brothers and sons and the whole family of the Recabites together. ⁴ Then I brought them into the Temple of the Lord. We went into the room of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah. Hanan was a man of God.^[d] The room was next to the room where the princes of Judah stay. It was over the room of Maaseiah son of Shallum. Maaseiah was the doorkeeper in the Temple. ⁵ Then I put some bowls full of wine and some cups in front of the Recabite family. And I said to them, “Drink some wine.”

⁶ But the Recabite family answered, “We never drink wine. We never drink it because our ancestor Jonadab son of Recab gave us this command: ‘You and your descendants must never drink wine. ⁷ Also you must never build houses, plant seeds, or plant vineyards. You must never do any of those things. You must live only in tents. If you do that, you will live a long time in the land where you move from place to place.’ ⁸ So we have obeyed everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. None of us ever drinks wine, and neither do our wives, sons, or daughters. ⁹ We never build houses to live in, we never own vineyards or fields, and we never plant crops. ¹⁰ We have lived in tents and have obeyed everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. ¹¹ But when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked the country of Judah, we did go into Jerusalem. We said to each other, ‘Come, we must enter the city of Jerusalem so that we can escape the Babylonian army and the Aramean army.’ So we have stayed in Jerusalem.”

¹² Then this message from the Lord came to Jeremiah: ¹³ “The Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says to go to the people of Judah and Jerusalem and tell them this message: ‘You should learn a lesson and obey my message.’ This message is from the Lord. ¹⁴ ‘Jonadab son of Recab ordered his sons not to drink wine, and that command has been obeyed. To this day the descendants of Jonadab have obeyed their ancestor’s command. They do not drink wine. But I have given commands to you people of Judah again and again, and you have not obeyed me. ¹⁵ Time after time I have sent my servants the prophets to you. They said, “You must each stop doing evil things and do what is right. Don’t follow other gods. Don’t worship or serve them. If you obey me, you will live in the land I have given to you and your ancestors.” But you have not paid attention to my message. ¹⁶ The descendants of Jonadab obeyed the commands that their ancestor gave them, but the people of Judah have not obeyed me.’

¹⁷ “So this is what the Lord God All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘I said that many bad things would happen to Judah and Jerusalem. I will soon make all those bad things happen. I spoke to the people, but they refused to listen. I called out to them, but they didn’t answer me.’”

¹⁸ Then Jeremiah said to the Recabite family, “This is what the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘You have obeyed the commands of your ancestor Jonadab. You have followed all of his teachings. You have done everything he commanded.’ ¹⁹ So the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, says: ‘There will always be a descendant of Jonadab son of Recab to serve me.’”

King Jehoiakim Burns Jeremiah’s Scroll

36 The message from the Lord came to Jeremiah. This was during the fourth year that Jehoiakim^[e] son of Josiah was king of Judah. This was the message from the Lord: ² “Jeremiah, get a scroll and write on it all the messages I have spoken to you. I have spoken to you about the nations of Israel and Judah and all the other nations. Write all the words that I have spoken to you from the time that Josiah was king, until now. ³ Maybe the people of Judah will hear what I am planning to do to them and will stop doing bad things. If they will do that, I will forgive them for the terrible sins they have committed.”

⁴ So Jeremiah called a man named Baruch son of Neriah. Jeremiah spoke the messages the Lord had given him. While he spoke, Baruch wrote the messages on the scroll. ⁵ Then Jeremiah said to Baruch, “I cannot go to the Lord’s Temple. I am not allowed to go there. ⁶ So I want you to go to the Temple of the Lord. Go there on a day of fasting and read to the people from the scroll. Read to the people the messages from the Lord that you wrote on the scroll as I spoke them to you. Read them to all the people of Judah who come into Jerusalem from the towns where they live. ⁷ Perhaps they will ask the Lord to help them. Perhaps each person will stop doing bad things. The Lord has announced that he is very angry with them.” ⁸ So Baruch son of Neriah did everything Jeremiah the prophet told him to do. Baruch read aloud the scroll that had the Lord’s messages written on it. He read it in the Lord’s Temple.

⁹ In the ninth month of the fifth year that Jehoiakim was king, a fast was announced. All those who lived in the city of Jerusalem and everyone who had come into Jerusalem from the towns of Judah were supposed to fast before the Lord. ¹⁰ At that time Baruch read the scroll that contained Jeremiah’s words. He read the scroll in the Temple of the Lord to all the people who were there. Baruch was in the room of Gemariah in the upper courtyard when he read from the scroll. That room was located at the entrance of the New Gate of the Temple. Gemariah was the son of Shaphan. Gemariah was a scribe in the Temple.

¹¹ A man named Micaiah heard all the messages from the Lord that Baruch read from the scroll. Micaiah was the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan. ¹² When Micaiah heard the messages from the scroll, he went down to the secretary’s room in the king’s palace. All the royal officials were sitting there in the king’s palace. These are the names of the officials: Elishama the secretary, Delaiah son of Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Acbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah; all the other royal officials were there too. ¹³ Micaiah told them everything he had heard Baruch read from the scroll.

¹⁴ Then all the officials sent a man named Jehudi to Baruch. (Jehudi was the son of Nethaniah, son of Shelemiah. Shelemiah was the son of Cushi.) Jehudi said to Baruch, “Bring the scroll that you read from and come with me.”

Baruch son of Neriah took the scroll and went with Jehudi to the officials.

¹⁵ Then the officials said to Baruch, “Sit down and read the scroll to us.”

So Baruch read the scroll to them.

¹⁶ When the royal officials heard all the messages from the scroll, they were afraid and looked at one another. They said to Baruch, “We must tell King Jehoiakim about these messages on the scroll.” ¹⁷ Then the officials asked Baruch, “Tell us, Baruch, where did you get these messages that you wrote on the scroll? Did you write down what Jeremiah said to you?”

¹⁸ “Yes,” Baruch answered. “Jeremiah spoke, and I wrote down all the messages with ink on this scroll.”

¹⁹ Then the royal officials said to Baruch, “You and Jeremiah must go and hide. Don’t tell anyone where you are hiding.”

²⁰ Then the royal officials put the scroll in the room of Elishama the scribe. They went to King Jehoiakim and told him all about the scroll.

²¹ So King Jehoiakim sent Jehudi to get the scroll. Jehudi brought the scroll from the room of Elishama the scribe. Then Jehudi read the scroll to the king and all the servants who stood around the king. ²² The time this happened was in the ninth month,^[f] so King Jehoiakim was sitting in the part of the palace used for winter. There was a fire burning in a small fireplace in front of the king. ²³ Jehudi began to read from the scroll. But after he would read two or three columns, King Jehoiakim would grab the scroll. Then he would cut those columns off the scroll with a small knife and throw them into the fireplace. Finally, the whole scroll was burned in the fire. ²⁴ And, when King Jehoiakim and his servants heard the message from the scroll, they were not afraid. They did not tear their clothes to show sorrow for doing wrong.

²⁵ Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah tried to talk King Jehoiakim out of burning the scroll, but he would not listen to them. ²⁶ Instead King Jehoiakim commanded some men to arrest Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. These men were Jerahmeel, a son of the king, Seraiah son of Azriel, and Shelemiah son of Abdeel. But they could not find Baruch and Jeremiah, because the Lord had hidden them.

²⁷ King Jehoiakim burned the scroll on which Baruch had written all the words that Jeremiah had spoken to him. Then this message from the Lord came to Jeremiah:

²⁸ “Get another scroll. Write all the messages on it that were on the first scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah burned. ²⁹ Also tell King Jehoiakim of Judah that this is what the Lord says: ‘Jehoiakim, you burned that scroll. You said, “Why did Jeremiah write that the king of Babylon will surely come and destroy this land and kill all the people and animals in it?” ³⁰ So this is what the Lord says about King Jehoiakim of Judah: Jehoiakim’s descendants will not sit on David’s throne. When Jehoiakim dies, he will not get a king’s funeral, but his body will be thrown out on the ground. His body will be left out in the heat of the day and the cold frost of the night. ³¹ I will punish Jehoiakim and his children, and I will punish his officials. I will do this because they are wicked. I will bring terrible disasters on them and on all those who live in Jerusalem and on the people from Judah. I will bring all these bad things on them, just as I warned them, because they have not listened to me.’”

³² Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch son of Neriah, the scribe. As Jeremiah spoke, Baruch wrote on the scroll the same messages that were on the scroll that King Jehoiakim had burned in the fire. And many other words like those messages were added to the second scroll.

Jeremiah Is Put Into Prison

37 Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. He appointed Zedekiah son of Josiah to be the king of Judah in the place of Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim. ² But Zedekiah, his servants, and the people of Judah did not pay attention to the messages the Lord had given to Jeremiah the prophet.

³ King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to Jeremiah the prophet with a message. This was the message they brought to Jeremiah: “Jeremiah, pray to the Lord our God for us.”

⁴ At that time Jeremiah had not yet been put into prison, so he was free to go anywhere he wanted. ⁵ Also at that time Pharaoh’s army had marched from Egypt toward Judah. The Babylonian army had surrounded the city of Jerusalem in order to defeat it. Then they had heard about the army from Egypt marching toward them. So the army from Babylon left Jerusalem to fight with the army from Egypt.

⁶ This message from the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet: ⁷ “This is what the Lord, the God of the people of Israel, says: ‘Jehucal and Zephaniah, I know that King Zedekiah of Judah sent you to me to ask questions. Tell King Zedekiah this: Pharaoh’s army marched out of Egypt to come here to help you against the army of Babylon. But Pharaoh’s army will go back to Egypt. ⁸ After that the army from Babylon will come back here and attack Jerusalem. Then they will capture and burn it.’ ⁹ This is what the Lord says: ‘People of Jerusalem, don’t fool yourselves. Don’t say to yourselves, “The army of Babylon will surely leave us alone.” They will not. ¹⁰ People of Jerusalem, even if you could defeat all the Babylonian army that is attacking you, there would still be a few wounded men left in their tents. Even those few wounded men would come out of their tents and burn Jerusalem down.’”

¹¹ When the Babylonian army left Jerusalem to fight the army of the Pharaoh of Egypt, ¹² Jeremiah wanted to travel from Jerusalem to the land of Benjamin.^[g] He wanted to be there for a division of some property that belonged to his family. ¹³ But when Jeremiah got to the Benjamin Gate of Jerusalem,^[h] the captain in charge of the guards arrested him. The captain’s name was Irijah son of Shelemiah. Shelemiah was the son of Hananiah. So Irijah the captain arrested Jeremiah and said, “Jeremiah, you are leaving us to join the Babylonian side.”

¹⁴ Jeremiah said to Irijah, “That is not true! I am not leaving to join the Babylonians.” But Irijah refused to listen to Jeremiah. And Irijah arrested Jeremiah and took him to the royal officials of Jerusalem. ¹⁵ Those officials were very angry with Jeremiah. They gave an order for Jeremiah to be beaten. Then they put him in a prison. The prison was in the house of Jonathan, a scribe for the king of Judah. His house had been made into a prison. ¹⁶ They put Jeremiah into a cell under the house of Jonathan. The cell was in a dungeon under the ground. Jeremiah was there for a long time.

¹⁷ Then King Zedekiah sent for Jeremiah and had him brought to the palace. Zedekiah talked to Jeremiah in private. He asked Jeremiah, “Is there any message from the Lord?”

Jeremiah answered, “Yes, he said that you will be given to the king of Babylon.” ¹⁸ Then Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, “What have I done wrong? What crime have I done against you or your officials or the people of Jerusalem? Why have you thrown me into prison? ¹⁹ King Zedekiah, where are your prophets now? They told you a false message. They said, ‘The king of Babylon will not attack you or this land of Judah.’ ²⁰ But now, my lord, king of Judah, please listen to me. Please let me bring my request to you. This is what I ask: Don’t send me back to the house of Jonathan the scribe. If you send me back, I will die there.”

²¹ So King Zedekiah gave orders for Jeremiah to be put under guard in the courtyard. And he ordered that Jeremiah should be given bread from the street bakers. He was given bread until there was no more bread in the city. So Jeremiah stayed under guard in the courtyard.