Two Baskets of Figs

¹The Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the Temple. (This was after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia had taken away Jehoiakim's son, King Jehoiachin of Judah, as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Babylonia, together with the leaders of Judah, the craftworkers, and the skilled workers.)

²The first basket contained good figs, those that ripen early; the other one contained bad figs, too bad to eat.

³Then the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” I answered, “Figs. The good ones are very good, and the bad ones are very bad, too bad to eat.”

⁴So the Lord said to me,

⁵“I, the Lord, the God of Israel, consider that the people who were taken away to Babylonia are like these good figs, and I will treat them with kindness.

⁶I will watch over them and bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not pull them up.

⁷I will give them the desire to know that I am the Lord. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God, because they will return to me with all their heart.

⁸“As for King Zedekiah of Judah, the politicians around him, and the rest of the people of Jerusalem who have stayed in this land or moved to Egypt—I, the Lord, will treat them all like these figs that are too bad to be eaten.

⁹I will bring such a disaster on them that all the nations of the world will be terrified. People will make fun of them, make jokes about them, ridicule them, and use their name as a curse everywhere I scatter them.

¹⁰I will bring war, starvation, and disease on them until there is not one of them left in the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.”

The Enemy from the North

¹In the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah, I received a message from the Lord concerning all the people of Judah. (This was the first year that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylonia.)

²I said to all the people of Judah and of Jerusalem,

³“For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon was king of Judah until this very day, the Lord has spoken to me, and I have never failed to tell you what he said. But you have paid no attention.

⁴You would not listen or pay attention, even though the Lord has continued to send you his servants the prophets.

⁵They told you to turn from your wicked way of life and from the evil things you are doing, so that you could go on living in the land that the Lord gave you and your ancestors as a permanent possession.

⁶They told you not to worship and serve other gods and not to make the Lord angry by worshiping the idols you had made. If you had obeyed the Lord, then he would not have punished you.

⁷But the Lord himself says that you refused to listen to him. Instead, you made him angry with your idols and have brought his punishment on yourselves.

⁸“So then, because you would not listen to him, the Lord Almighty says,

⁹‘I am going to send for all the peoples from the north and for my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. I am going to bring them to fight against Judah and its inhabitants and against all the neighboring nations. I am going to destroy this nation and its neighbors and leave them in ruins forever, a terrible and shocking sight. I, the Lord, have spoken.

¹⁰I will silence their shouts of joy and gladness and the happy sounds of wedding feasts. They will have no oil for their lamps, and there will be no more grain.

¹¹This whole land will be left in ruins and will be a shocking sight, and the neighboring nations will serve the king of Babylonia for seventy years.

¹²After that I will punish Babylonia and its king for their sin. I will destroy that country and leave it in ruins forever.

¹³I will punish Babylonia with all the disasters that I threatened to bring on the nations when I spoke through Jeremiah—all the disasters recorded in this book.

¹⁴I will pay the Babylonians back for what they have done, and many nations and great kings will make slaves of them.’”

God's Judgment on the Nations

¹⁵The Lord, the God of Israel, said to me, “Here is a wine cup filled with my anger. Take it to all the nations to whom I send you, and make them drink from it.

¹⁶When they drink from it, they will stagger and go out of their minds because of the war I am sending against them.”

¹⁷So I took the cup from the Lord's hand, gave it to all the nations to whom the Lord had sent me, and made them drink from it.

¹⁸Jerusalem and all the towns of Judah, together with its kings and leaders, were made to drink from it, so that they would become a desert, a terrible and shocking sight, and so that people would use their name as a curse—as they still do.

^19-26Here is the list of all the others who had to drink from the cup: the king of Egypt, his officials and leaders; all the Egyptians and all the foreigners in Egypt; all the kings of the land of Uz; all the kings of the Philistine cities of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and what remains of Ashdod; all the people of Edom, Moab, and Ammon; all the kings of Tyre and Sidon; all the kings of the Mediterranean lands; the cities of Dedan, Tema, and Buz; all the people who cut their hair short; all the kings of Arabia; all the kings of the desert tribes; all the kings of Zimri, Elam, and Media; all the kings of the north, far and near, one after another. Every nation on the face of the earth had to drink from it. Last of all, the king of Babylonia will drink from it.

²⁷Then the Lord said to me, “Tell the people that I, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, am commanding them to drink until they are drunk and vomit, until they fall down and cannot get up, because of the war that I am sending against them.

²⁸And if they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink from it, then tell them that the Lord Almighty has said that they will still have to drink from it.

²⁹I will begin my work of destruction in my own city. Do they think they will go unpunished? No, they will be punished, for I am going to send war on all the people on earth. I, the Lord Almighty, have spoken.

³⁰“You, Jeremiah, must proclaim everything I have said. You must tell these people, ‘The Lord will roar from heaven and thunder from the heights of heaven. He will roar against his people; he will shout like a man treading grapes. Everyone on earth will hear him,

³¹and the sound will echo to the ends of the earth. The Lord has a case against the nations. He will bring all people to trial and put the wicked to death. The Lord has spoken.’”

³²The Lord Almighty says that disaster is coming on one nation after another, and a great storm is gathering at the far ends of the earth.

³³On that day the bodies of those whom the Lord has killed will lie scattered from one end of the earth to the other. No one will mourn for them, and they will not be taken away and buried. They will lie on the ground like piles of manure.

³⁴Cry, you leaders, you shepherds of my people, cry out loud! Mourn and roll in the dust. The time has come for you to be slaughtered, and you will be butchered like rams.

³⁵There will be no way for you to escape.

^36-37You moan and cry out in distress because the Lord in his anger has destroyed your nation and left your peaceful country in ruins.

³⁸The Lord has abandoned his people like a lion that leaves its cave. The horrors of war and the Lord's fierce anger have turned the country into a desert.

Daniel in the Pit of Lions

¹Darius decided to appoint a hundred and twenty governors to hold office throughout his empire.

²In addition, he chose Daniel and two others to supervise the governors and to look after the king's interests.

³Daniel soon showed that he could do better work than the other supervisors or the governors. Because he was so outstanding, the king considered putting him in charge of the whole empire.

⁴Then the other supervisors and the governors tried to find something wrong with the way Daniel administered the empire, but they couldn't, because Daniel was reliable and did not do anything wrong or dishonest.

⁵They said to each other, “We are not going to find anything of which to accuse Daniel unless it is something in connection with his religion.”

⁶So they went to see the king and said, “King Darius, may Your Majesty live forever!

⁷All of us who administer your empire—the supervisors, the governors, the lieutenant governors, and the other officials—have agreed that Your Majesty should issue an order and enforce it strictly. Give orders that for thirty days no one be permitted to request anything from any god or from any human being except from Your Majesty. Anyone who violates this order is to be thrown into a pit filled with lions.

⁸So let Your Majesty issue this order and sign it, and it will be in force, a law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”

⁹And so King Darius signed the order.

¹⁰When Daniel learned that the order had been signed, he went home. In an upstairs room of his house there were windows that faced toward Jerusalem. There, just as he had always done, he knelt down at the open windows and prayed to God three times a day.

¹¹When Daniel's enemies observed him praying to God,

¹²all of them went together to the king to accuse Daniel. They said, “Your Majesty, you signed an order that for the next thirty days anyone who requested anything from any god or from any human being except you, would be thrown into a pit filled with lions.” The king replied, “Yes, that is a strict order, a law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”

¹³Then they said to the king, “Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, does not respect Your Majesty or obey the order you issued. He prays regularly three times a day.”

¹⁴When the king heard this, he was upset and did his best to find some way to rescue Daniel. He kept trying until sunset.

¹⁵Then Daniel's enemies came back to the king and said to him, “Your Majesty knows that according to the laws of the Medes and Persians no order which the king issues can be changed.”

¹⁶So the king gave orders for Daniel to be taken and thrown into the pit filled with lions. He said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve so loyally, rescue you.”

¹⁷A stone was put over the mouth of the pit, and the king placed his own royal seal and the seal of his noblemen on the stone, so that no one could rescue Daniel.

¹⁸Then the king returned to the palace and spent a sleepless night, without food or any form of entertainment.

¹⁹At dawn the king got up and hurried to the pit.

²⁰When he got there, he called out anxiously, “Daniel, servant of the living God! Was the God you serve so loyally able to save you from the lions?”

²¹Daniel answered, “May Your Majesty live forever!

²²God sent his angel to shut the mouths of the lions so that they would not hurt me. He did this because he knew that I was innocent and because I have not wronged you, Your Majesty.”

²³The king was overjoyed and gave orders for Daniel to be pulled up out of the pit. So they pulled him up and saw that he had not been hurt at all, for he trusted God.

²⁴Then the king gave orders to arrest all those who had accused Daniel, and he had them thrown, together with their wives and children, into the pit filled with lions. Before they even reached the bottom of the pit, the lions pounced on them and broke all their bones.

²⁵Then King Darius wrote to the people of all nations, races, and languages on earth: “Greetings!

²⁶I command that throughout my empire everyone should fear and respect Daniel's God. “He is a living God, and he will rule forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed, and his power will never come to an end.

²⁷He saves and rescues; he performs wonders and miracles in heaven and on earth. He saved Daniel from being killed by the lions.”

²⁸Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

Daniel's Vision of the Four Beasts

¹In the first year that Belshazzar was king of Babylonia, I had a dream and saw a vision in the night. I wrote the dream down, and this is the record

²of what I saw that night: Winds were blowing from all directions and lashing the surface of the ocean.

³Four huge beasts came up out of the ocean, each one different from the others.

⁴The first one looked like a lion, but had wings like an eagle. While I was watching, the wings were torn off. The beast was lifted up and made to stand up straight. And then a human mind was given to it.

⁵The second beast looked like a bear standing on its hind legs. It was holding three ribs between its teeth, and a voice said to it, “Go on, eat as much meat as you can!”

⁶While I was watching, another beast appeared. It looked like a leopard, but on its back there were four wings, like the wings of a bird, and it had four heads. It had a look of authority about it.

⁷As I was watching, a fourth beast appeared. It was powerful, horrible, terrifying. With its huge iron teeth it crushed its victims, and then it trampled on them. Unlike the other beasts, it had ten horns.

⁸While I was staring at the horns, I saw a little horn coming up among the others. It tore out three of the horns that were already there. This horn had human eyes and a mouth that was boasting proudly.

The Vision of the One Who Has Been Living Forever

⁹While I was looking, thrones were put in place. One who had been living forever sat down on one of the thrones. His clothes were white as snow, and his hair was like pure wool. His throne, mounted on fiery wheels, was blazing with fire,

¹⁰and a stream of fire was pouring out from it. There were many thousands of people there to serve him, and millions of people stood before him. The court began its session, and the books were opened.

¹¹While I was looking, I could still hear the little horn bragging and boasting. As I watched, the fourth beast was killed, and its body was thrown into the flames and destroyed.

¹²The other beasts had their power taken away, but they were permitted to go on living for a limited time.

¹³During this vision in the night, I saw what looked like a human being. He was approaching me, surrounded by clouds, and he went to the one who had been living forever and was presented to him.

¹⁴He was given authority, honor, and royal power, so that the people of all nations, races, and languages would serve him. His authority would last forever, and his kingdom would never end.

The Visions Are Explained

¹⁵The visions I saw alarmed me, and I was deeply disturbed.

¹⁶I went up to one of those standing there and asked him to explain it all. So he told me the meaning.

¹⁷He said, “These four huge beasts are four empires which will arise on earth.

¹⁸And the people of the Supreme God will receive royal power and keep it forever and ever.”

¹⁹Then I wanted to know more about the fourth beast, which was not like any of the others—the terrifying beast which crushed its victims with its bronze claws and iron teeth and then trampled on them.

²⁰And I wanted to know about the ten horns on its head and the horn that had come up afterward and had made three of the horns fall. It had eyes and a mouth and was boasting proudly. It was more terrifying than any of the others.

²¹While I was looking, that horn made war on God's people and conquered them.

²²Then the one who had been living forever came and pronounced judgment in favor of the people of the Supreme God. The time had arrived for God's people to receive royal power.

²³This is the explanation I was given: “The fourth beast is a fourth empire that will be on the earth and will be different from all other empires. It will crush the whole earth and trample it down.

²⁴The ten horns are ten kings who will rule that empire. Then another king will appear; he will be very different from the earlier ones and will overthrow three kings.

²⁵He will speak against the Supreme God and oppress God's people. He will try to change their religious laws and festivals, and God's people will be under his power for three and a half years.

²⁶Then the heavenly court will sit in judgment, take away his power, and destroy him completely.

²⁷The power and greatness of all the kingdoms on earth will be given to the people of the Supreme God. Their royal power will never end, and all rulers on earth will serve and obey them.”

²⁸This is the end of the account. I was so frightened that I turned pale, and I kept everything to myself.

⁵The Lord hates everyone who is arrogant; he will never let them escape punishment.

⁶Be loyal and faithful, and God will forgive your sin. Obey the Lord and nothing evil will happen to you.

⁷When you please the Lord, you can make your enemies into friends.

⁸It is better to have a little, honestly earned, than to have a large income, dishonestly gained.