The letter Jeremiah sent to the people of Judah who had been exiled to Babylonia
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1-2 After King Jehoiachin, his mother, his palace officials, other officials in Judah, and all the various kinds of craftsmen [DOU] had been exiled to Babylon, I wrote a letter to the elders, the priests, the prophets and all the other people who had been taken from Jerusalem to Babylon by soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar.
3 I gave the letter to Elasah the son of Shaphan, and to Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, when they were about to go to Babylon to be ambassadors from King Zedekiah to King Nebuchadnezzar. This is what I wrote in the letter:
4 This is what the Almighty Commander of the armies of angels and the God whom we Israelis worship, says to all you people who were captured here in Jerusalem and taken there to Babylon:
5 “Build houses there, and plan to stay there because you will be there for many years. Plant gardens, and eat the food that is produced in the gardens.
6 Get married and have children. Then when they grow up, choose wives for your sons, and husbands for your daughters, in order that they also may have children. In that way, the number of you people will increase, not decrease.
7 Also, do things that will cause things to go well for the other people there in the city where I sent you. Pray that things will go well for the people in that city, because if things go well for them, things will go well for you, also.”
8 This is what the Almighty Commander of the armies of angels and the God whom we Israeli people worship, says: “There are false prophets and fortune-tellers among you. Do not allow them to deceive you. Do not pay attention to them when they tell you their dreams,
9 because they are telling you lies, saying that [MTY] I have given them the messages that they are telling you. But, I have not appointed them.”
10 This is also what Yahweh says: “After you and your children have been in Babylon for seventy years, I will help you, and do for you the things that I promised, and I will enable you to return here to Jerusalem.
11 I, Yahweh, know what I have planned for you. I am planning to cause things to go well for you, not to cause you to experience disasters. I am planning to give you many things that you confidently expect to receive in the future.
12 At that time, when you pray, I will heed you.
13 If you earnestly desire for me to bless you, you will experience me blessing you.
14 I will make my help available to you [IDI]. I will cause you to no longer be slaves in Babylon. I will gather you from all the nations to which I have exiled you, and I will bring you back here to your own land, to the place from which you were taken.”
15 Some of you say that Yahweh has appointed prophets for you there in Babylon.
16 But this is what Yahweh says about the king who rules here in Jerusalem, and about all the other people who are still living here—your relatives who were not taken to Babylon with you.
17 The Almighty Commander of the armies of angels says this: “I will cause them to experience wars and famines and diseases. I will cause them to become like [SIM] bad figs that are very rotten, with the result that no one can eat them.
18 I will not stop causing them to experience wars and famines and diseases. And I will scatter them all around the world. In every country where I ◄force them to be taken/exile them►, I will cause them to be people whom others curse and be horrified about and make fun of [DOU].
19 That will happen because they have refused to pay attention to my messages, messages that I gave to the prophets whom I sent to them. And you who have been exiled to Babylon have not paid attention to them, either.” That is what Yahweh says.
20 Therefore, you people who have been ◄exiled/forced to go► from Jerusalem to Babylon, listen to this message from Yahweh.
21 This is what the Almighty Commander of the armies of angels the God whom we Israelis worship, says about Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and about Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, who are telling lies to you, saying that they are giving messages [MTY] from him: “They will be seized and taken to [MTY] King Nebuchadnezzar, who will cause them to be executed while you are watching.
22 Because of what will happen to them, all you people who have been taken from Judah to Babylon will say this when they curse someone: ‘I hope/wish that Yahweh will do to you the same thing that he did to Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon caused to be killed by being burned in a fire.’
23 They have done terrible things to my Israeli people. They have committed adultery with their neighbors' wives, and they have spoken lies, saying that they were messages [MTY] from me. They have said things that I did not tell them to say, and I, Yahweh, have heard them say those things.”
A message for Shemaiah
24 Yahweh told me to send this message to Shemaiah, a man from Nehelam town who was living in Babylon:
25 This is what the Almighty Commander of the armies of angels the God whom we Israelis worship, says: “You wrote a letter that no one told you to write. You sent it to Zephaniah the priest, the son of Maaseiah, and you sent copies to the other priests and all the other people here in Jerusalem. This is what you wrote to him:
26 Zephaniah, Yahweh has appointed you to be the priest instead of Jehoiada, to supervise those who work in the temple. Anyone who acts like a crazy man and who claims that he is a prophet, you should put his arms and legs and head into ◄stocks/a wooden frame so that he cannot move►.
27 So why have you not done anything to stop Jeremiah, the man from Anathoth town, who pretends that he is a prophet among you?
28 He sent a letter to us who are here in Babylon, saying that we will be here for a long time. He said that therefore we should build houses and plan to stay here, and plant gardens, and eat the food that is produced in the gardens.”
29 But when Zephaniah the priest received the letter from you, he brought it to me and read it to me.
30 Then Yahweh gave me this message:
31 “Send this message to all the people from Judah who are there in Babylon: Say that this is what Yahweh says about Shemaiah, the man from Nehelam: ‘I did not appoint him, but he has deceived you and caused you to believe the lies that he prophesied.
32 So, I will punish him and his family. He has incited you to rebel against me. Because of that, all of his descendants will soon die. I will do many good things for you, my people, but he and his descendants will not see those things, because they will be dead. That will surely happen because I, Yahweh, have said it!’ ”