After the Fall

The captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, “The Lord your God said this harm would come on this place. Now the Lord has brought it, and he has done just what he said. This has happened to you because you sinned against the Lord and didn’t obey his voice.

“Now look, today I am taking the chains off your hands. If you want to come to Babylon with me, come, and I will take care of you. If you don’t want to, then don’t. The whole land is in front of you. Go wherever seems good and right to you.”

Jeremiah still hadn’t gone back when the captain said, “Go back, then, to Gedaliah son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan. The king of Babylon has made him governor over the towns of Judah. Live with him among the people, or go wherever seems right to you.” Then the captain gave him food and a gift, and let him go.

So Jeremiah went to Gedaliah at Mizpah and lived with him there, among the people who were left in the land.

Gedaliah swore an oath to them and their men. “Don’t be afraid to serve the Chaldeans,” he said. “Live here in the land, serve the king of Babylon, and all will be well with you. I will stay at Mizpah and stand before the Chaldeans who come to us. But you, gather the wine and the summer fruit and the oil, and store them in your jars. Live in the towns you have taken.”

The Jews in Moab, among the Ammonites, in Edom and in every other country heard it too: the king of Babylon had left some of Judah’s people in the land and had put Gedaliah over them. So all those Jews came back from every place where they had been scattered. They came to Gedaliah at Mizpah in the land of Judah, and they gathered in a great harvest of wine and summer fruit.

Johanan son of Kareah and all the army captains from the countryside came to Gedaliah at Mizpah. “Do you know,” they asked him, “that Baalis, the Ammonite king, has sent Ishmael to kill you?” But Gedaliah didn’t believe them.

Then Johanan spoke to Gedaliah in secret at Mizpah. “Please let me go and kill Ishmael,” he said. “Nobody will know. Why should he kill you? Then all the Jews who have gathered around you would be scattered, and all that is left of Judah would die out.”

But Gedaliah said to Johanan, “You must not do this. What you say about Ishmael is false.”

Then Ishmael and his ten men got up and struck Gedaliah down with the sword. They killed the man the king of Babylon had made governor over the land. Ishmael also killed all the Jews who were with Gedaliah there, and the Chaldean fighting men he found at Mizpah.

On the second day after Gedaliah was killed, before anyone knew about it, eighty men came from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria. Their beards were shaved off, their clothes were torn, and they had cut themselves. They were carrying meal offerings and frankincense to bring to the Lord’s house.

Ishmael went out of Mizpah to meet them, weeping all along the way. When he reached them, he said, “Come to Gedaliah son of Ahikam.”

When they came into the middle of the city, Ishmael and the men with him killed them and threw them into the pit.

But ten of the men said to Ishmael, “Don’t kill us! We have supplies of wheat and barley, oil and honey, hidden in the field.” So he stopped, and didn’t kill them along with the others.

The pit was the one King Asa had made out of fear of Baasha king of Israel. Into it Ishmael threw the bodies of all the men he had killed beside Gedaliah. He filled it with the people he killed.

Then Ishmael carried off everyone else at Mizpah as captives: the king’s daughters and all the people left there. Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had put them in Gedaliah’s care. Ishmael took them away and set out to cross over to the Ammonites.

When the people Ishmael had with him saw Johanan and the captains, they were glad. Everyone Ishmael had carried off from Mizpah turned around and came back to Johanan.

But Ishmael escaped from Johanan, taking eight men with him, and went to the Ammonites.

Then Johanan and all the army captains with him took everyone who was left from Mizpah. These were the people Johanan had won back from Ishmael after Ishmael killed Gedaliah: the soldiers, the women, the children and the eunuchs he had brought back from Gibeon. They set out for Egypt and stayed on the way at Geruth Chimham, near Bethlehem. They were afraid of the Chaldeans, because Ishmael had killed Gedaliah, the king of Babylon’s governor.

“I have heard you,” Jeremiah told them. “I will pray for you to the Lord your God, as you have asked. Whatever the Lord answers, I will tell you. I’ll hold nothing back.”

They said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness among us, if we don’t do all that the Lord your God sends you to tell us. We are sending you to the Lord our God, and we will obey his voice, whether his answer is good or bad. Then all will be well with us when we obey him.”

Ten days later, the Lord’s word came to Jeremiah. Jeremiah called together Johanan the son of Kareah, the army captains with him, and everyone, from the least to the greatest. “You sent me to bring your request to the Lord, the God of Israel,” he said to them. “This is what he says:

“If you will stay on in this land, I will build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pull you up, because I grieve over the harm I have brought on you. Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon, though you fear him now. Don’t be afraid of him, says the Lord. I am with you. I will save you and rescue you from his hand. I will show you mercy, so that he will have mercy on you and let you go back to your own land.

“But suppose you say, ‘We won’t live in this land,’ and so don’t obey the Lord your God. Suppose you say, ‘No, we’ll go to Egypt, where we won’t see war or hear the trumpet or go hungry, and we’ll live there.’ Then hear the Lord’s word, you people of Judah who are left. The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: If you really are set on going to live in Egypt, the sword you fear will catch up with you there, and the famine you are afraid of will follow close behind you. You will die in Egypt. Everyone who is set on going there to live will die by the sword, by famine and by disease. None of them will be left or escape the harm I will bring on them.

“The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: I poured out my anger and fury on the people of Jerusalem. In the same way I will pour out my fury on you when you go into Egypt. People will be horrified and shocked at you, and you will be cursed and scorned. And you will never see this place again.

“You people of Judah who are left, the Lord has told you, ‘Don’t go into Egypt!’ Be very sure that I have warned you today. You have deceived yourselves. You sent me to the Lord your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God. Then tell us what he says, every word, and we will do it.’ Today I have told you, and you have not obeyed the Lord your God in anything he sent me to say. So know for certain that you will die by the sword, by famine and by disease in the place where you want to go and live.”

So Johanan, all the army captains and all the people didn’t obey the Lord’s voice telling them to stay in the land of Judah. Johanan and the army captains took everyone from Judah who was left. These were the people who had been scattered among all the nations and had come back to live in Judah. They took the men, the women and the children, the king’s daughters, and everyone Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah. They took Jeremiah the prophet too, and Baruch. They went into Egypt, because they didn’t obey the Lord’s voice, and they came to Tahpanhes.

“Then tell them: The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: Look, I will send for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant. On these stones that I have hidden I will set his throne, and he will spread his royal tent over them. He will come and strike the land of Egypt. Those marked for death will die. Those marked for captivity will be taken captive. Those marked for the sword will fall by the sword.

“I will light a fire in the temples of Egypt’s gods. He will burn them and carry them away captive. He will wrap the land of Egypt around himself as a shepherd puts on his cloak, and he will leave in peace. He will break the pillars of Beth Shemesh in the land of Egypt, and he will burn the temples of Egypt’s gods with fire.”

“The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: You have seen all the harm I brought on Jerusalem and every town of Judah. Today they lie in ruins, with no one living in them. It is because of the wicked things their people did to make me angry: they burned incense and served other gods, gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors had ever known. Again and again I sent you my servants the prophets to say, ‘Please don’t do this disgusting thing that I hate!’ But they didn’t listen or pay attention. They didn’t turn from their wickedness. They kept burning incense to other gods. So my fury and my anger poured out and blazed in the towns of Judah and in Jerusalem’s streets, and they are ruined and empty to this day.

“Now the Lord, the God of Armies, the God of Israel, asks: Why do you bring such great harm on yourselves? Why cut off your own men and women, children and nursing babies from Judah, and leave yourselves no one at all? You anger me with the work of your hands when you burn incense to other gods in Egypt, the land you have come to live in. You will be cut off for it, and you will be a curse and a disgrace among all the nations of the earth. Have you forgotten the wicked things your ancestors did, and the kings of Judah and their wives? Have you forgotten the wicked things you and your wives did in Judah and in Jerusalem’s streets? Even now they are not humbled. They have no fear, and they have not lived by my law and my rules, which I set before you and your ancestors.

“So the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Look, I will turn against you, to bring harm on you and to cut off all Judah. I will take what is left of Judah, the people who were set on coming to live in Egypt, and they will all come to an end. From the least to the greatest, they will fall in Egypt and die by the sword and by famine. They will be a horror and a shock, a curse and a disgrace. I will punish those who live in Egypt as I punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by famine and by disease. These people of Judah who are left have gone into Egypt to live there. None of them will escape or be left to go back to the land of Judah, though they want to return and live there. No one will go back except those who escape.”

Then a great crowd answered Jeremiah. It was all the people living in Egypt, in Pathros: all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women standing by. “We won’t listen to the word you have spoken to us in the Lord’s name,” they said.

“We will keep every word we have spoken. We will burn incense to the queen of the sky and pour out drink offerings to her. That is what we have done in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials. Back then we had plenty of food, all was well with us, and we saw no harm. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have gone without everything, and the sword and famine have been wiping us out.”

The women said, “When we burned incense to the queen of the sky and poured out drink offerings to her, when we baked cakes to worship her, did we do it without our husbands?”

Then Jeremiah spoke to all the people, men and women, who had answered him. “You burned incense in Judah’s towns and Jerusalem’s streets, you and your ancestors, your kings and officials, and the people of the land. Didn’t the Lord remember it? Didn’t it come to his mind? The Lord could no longer bear the evil things you did and the disgusting things you practiced. That is why your land is a ruin today, a horror and a curse, with no one living in it. You burned incense and sinned against the Lord. You didn’t obey his voice, or live by his law, his rules and his decrees. That is why this harm has come on you today.”

Jeremiah also said to all the people, including all the women, “Hear the Lord’s word, all you people of Judah in Egypt! The Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Both you and your wives have spoken with your mouths and carried it out with your hands. You said, ‘We will surely keep the vows we made, to burn incense to the queen of the sky and pour out drink offerings to her.’ So keep your vows, then! Carry them out!

“So hear the Lord’s word, all you people of Judah who live in Egypt: Look, I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord: no one from Judah anywhere in Egypt will ever again use my name to swear, ‘As the Lord God lives.’ Look, I am watching over them to harm them, and not to do them good. Every man of Judah in Egypt will die by the sword and by famine, until they are all gone. The few who escape the sword will come back from Egypt to the land of Judah. And all the people of Judah who are left, who have gone to Egypt to live, will know whose word comes true, mine or theirs.

“This will be the sign for you, says the Lord, that I will punish you in this place. It will show you that my words against you will surely come true and bring you harm. The Lord says: Look, I will hand Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt over to his enemies, to those who want to kill him. I will do it just as I handed Zedekiah king of Judah over to his enemy Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who wanted to kill him.”