Giê-rê-mi 27

Bend your necks under Babylon’s yoke

¹Early in the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, this message came to Jeremiah from the LORD:^{a 2}The LORD said this to me: “Make yourself straps and yoke bars, and put them on your neck. ³Then send them to the kings of Edom, Moab, the Ammonites, Tyre and Sidon through the envoys who have come to Zedekiah king of Judah in Jerusalem. ⁴Give them this charge for their masters: ‘The LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this: This is what you are to say to your masters: ⁵It is I who made the earth, and the people and animals that live on it, by my great power and my outstretched arm, and I give it to anyone I see fit. ⁶Now I have handed all these lands over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant. I have even given him the wild animals to serve him. ⁷All the nations will serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time comes for his own land as well. Then many nations and great kings will make him serve them.^{b 8}Any nation or kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish with sword, famine and plague, declares the LORD, until I have finished it off by his hand. ⁹So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers or your sorcerers, who keep telling you, “You will not serve the king of Babylon.” ¹⁰They are prophesying a lie to you, and it will only lead to your being taken far from your land. I will drive you out, and you will perish. ¹¹But any nation that bows its neck to the king of Babylon’s yoke and serves him, I will leave on its own land, declares the LORD. They will farm it and live there.’” ¹²I said the same things to Zedekiah king of Judah: “Bow your necks to the king of Babylon’s yoke. Serve him and his people, and you will live. ¹³Why should you and your people die by sword, famine and plague, as the LORD has said will happen to any nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? ¹⁴Do not listen to the words of the prophets who tell you, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’ They are prophesying a lie to you. ¹⁵I did not send them, declares the LORD. They are prophesying lies in my name, and the result will be that I drive you out and you perish, you and the prophets who prophesy to you.” ¹⁶Then I spoke to the priests and to all this people: “The LORD says this: Do not listen to what your prophets are prophesying to you: ‘The vessels of the house of the LORD will very soon be brought back from Babylon.’ They are prophesying a lie to you.^{c 17}Do not listen to them. Serve the king of Babylon and you will live. Why should this city be turned into a ruin? ¹⁸If they really are prophets and have the word of the LORD with them, they should plead with the LORD of Armies that the vessels still left in the house of the LORD, in the palace of Judah’s king and in Jerusalem may not go to Babylon.

¹⁹For the LORD of Armies says this concerning the pillars, the Sea, the stands and the rest of the vessels still left in this city, ²⁰which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon left behind when he took Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, from Jerusalem into exile in Babylon, along with all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem,

²¹yes, the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says this about the vessels still left in the house of the LORD, in the palace of Judah’s king and in Jerusalem: ²²They will be carried to Babylon, and they will stay there until the day I come for them, declares the LORD. Then I will bring them back up and return them to this place.”