Jeremiah 34
1 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came with the armies of all the kingdoms that he ruled, and they fought against Jerusalem and the other towns [in Judah]. At that time, Yahweh gave me this message:
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army, and all the kingdoms of the earth which were under his rule, and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and all its towns, saying,
2 “Go to Zedekiah the King of Judah, and say to him, ‘This is what Yahweh, the God whom we Israelis [worship], says: “I am about to enable the army of the King of Babylon to capture this city, and they will burn it down.
The Lord, the God of Israel, has said, Go and say to Zedekiah, king of Judah, This is what the Lord has said: See, I will give this town into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will have it burned with fire:
3 You will not escape from them; they will capture you and take you to the king of Babylon. And [then] they will take you to Babylon.”’
And you will not get away from him, but will certainly be taken and given up into his hands; and you will see the king of Babylon, eye to eye, and he will have talk with you, mouth to mouth, and you will go to Babylon.
4 But King Zedekiah, listen to this that Yahweh has promised: ‘You will not be killed in a battle [MTY];
But give ear to the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah, king of Judah; this is what the Lord has said about you: Death will not come to you by the sword:
5 you will die peacefully. [When you die], people will burn incense to honor/remember you just as they did for your ancestors who were kings before you became king. They will mourn for you, crying, “We are very sad that our king is dead!” I, Yahweh, promise that will happen.’”
You will come to your end in peace; and such burnings as they made for your fathers, the earlier kings before you, will be made for you; and they will be weeping for you and saying, Ah lord! for I have said the word, says the Lord.
6 [So] I took that message to King Zedekiah.
Then Jeremiah the prophet said all these things to Zedekiah, king of Judah, in Jerusalem,
7 At that time the army of Babylonia had surrounded Jerusalem and Lachish and Azekah. Those [three] cities were the only cities in Judah that had high walls around them that still had not been captured.
When the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the towns of Judah which had not been taken, against Lachish and against Azekah; for these were the last of the walled towns of Judah.
8 King Zedekiah had decreed that the people must free their slaves.
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after King Zedekiah had made an agreement with all the people in Jerusalem, to give news in public that servants were to be made free;
9 [He decreed that] the people must free their Hebrew slaves, [both the] men slaves and the women [slaves]. No one would be allowed to force a fellow Jew to [continue to] be his slave.
That every man was to let his Hebrew man-servant and his Hebrew servant-girl go free; so that no one might make use of a Jew, his countryman, as a servant:
10 The officials and the rest of the people had obeyed [what the king decreed],
And this was done by all the rulers and the people who had taken part in the agreement, and every one let his man-servant and his servant-girl go free, not to be used as servants any longer; they did so, and let them go.
11 but later they changed their minds. They forced the men and women whom they had freed to become their slaves again.
But later, they took back again the servants and the servant-girls whom they had let go free, and put them again under the yoke as servants and servant-girls.
12 [So] Yahweh gave me this message [to tell to them]:
For this reason the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
13 “I, Yahweh, the God whom you Israelis [say you belong to], (made an agreement with/gave this command to) your ancestors [long ago], when I rescued them from being slaves in Egypt.
The Lord, the God of Israel, has said, I made an agreement with your fathers on the day when I took them out of Egypt, out of the prison-house, saying,
14 I told them that they must free all their Hebrew slaves after the slaves had worked for them for six years. But your ancestors did not pay any attention to what I said.
At the end of seven years every man is to let go his countryman who is a Hebrew, who has become yours for a price and has been your servant for six years; you are to let him go free: but your fathers gave no attention and did not give ear.
15 Recently, you obeyed my command and stopped doing what was wrong and did what was right. You made a solemn agreement at my temple [that you would free your slaves], and [then] you freed them.
And now, turning away from evil, you had done what is right in my eyes, giving a public undertaking for every man to make his neighbour free; and you had made an agreement before me in the house which is named by my name:
16 But now you have disregarded what you solemnly promised, and you have shown contempt for what I [MTY] said by taking back the women and men whom you had freed and said they could live wherever they wanted to. [Now] you have forced them to be your slaves again.
But again you have put shame on my name, and you have taken back, every one his man-servant and his servant-girl, whom you had sent away free, and you have put them under the yoke again to be your servants and servant-girls.
17 Therefore, this is what [I], Yahweh, say: ‘Because you have not obeyed me by freeing your fellow Israelis, I will free you to [be destroyed by] the swords [of your enemies] and by famines and diseases. All the nations of the earth will be horrified because of [what happens to] you.
And so the Lord has said, You have not given ear to me and undertaken publicly, every man to let loose his countryman and his neighbour: see, I undertake to let loose against you the sword and disease and need of food; and I will send you wandering among all the kingdoms of the earth.
18 Because you have disregarded what I said in my agreement with you, I will do to you just like you did to the calves that you cut in half to show that you would surely do what you solemnly promised that you would do. I will [enable your enemies to] cut you into pieces, you officials of Judah and you officials of Jerusalem, and you officials in the palace, and you priests and all you common people. I will do that because you have disregarded what you solemnly promised [about freeing your slaves].
And I will give the men who have gone against my agreement and have not given effect to the words of the agreement which they made before me, when the ox was cut in two and they went between the parts of it,
The rulers of Judah and the rulers of Jerusalem, the unsexed servants and the priests and all the people of the land who went between the parts of the ox,
20 I will enable your enemies to capture you, and they will kill you. And your bodies will be food for vultures and wild animals.
Even these I will give up into the hands of their haters and into the hands of those who have designs against their lives: and their dead bodies will become food for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth.
21 I will enable the army of the king of Babylon to capture King Zedekiah and his officials. Although the king of Babylon and his army have left Jerusalem [for a short time],
And Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his rulers I will give into the hands of their haters and into the hands of those who have designs against their lives, and into the hands of the king of Babylon's army which has gone away from you.
22 I will summon them back again. [This time], they will fight against this city and capture it and burn it down. I will make [sure] that all the towns in Judah are destroyed, [with the result that] no one will live there [any more].’”
See, I will give orders, says the Lord, and make them come back to this town; and they will make war on it and take it and have it burned with fire: and I will make the towns of Judah waste and unpeopled.
