Jeremiah Buys a Field

¹The Lord spoke to me in the tenth year that Zedekiah was king of Judah, which was also the eighteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia.

²At that time the army of the king of Babylonia was attacking Jerusalem, and I was locked up in the courtyard of the royal palace.

³King Zedekiah had imprisoned me there and had accused me of announcing that the Lord had said, “I am going to let the king of Babylonia capture this city,

⁴and King Zedekiah will not escape. He will be handed over to the king of Babylonia; he will see him face-to-face and will speak to him in person.

⁵Zedekiah will be taken to Babylonia, and he will remain there until I deal with him. Even if he fights the Babylonians, he will not be successful. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

⁶The Lord told me

⁷that Hanamel, my uncle Shallum's son, would come to me with the request to buy his field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin, because I was his nearest relative and had the right to buy it for myself.

⁸Then, just as the Lord had said, Hanamel came to me there in the courtyard and asked me to buy the field. So I knew that the Lord had really spoken to me.

⁹I bought the field from Hanamel and weighed out the money to him; the price came to seventeen pieces of silver.

¹⁰I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the money on scales.

¹¹Then I took both copies of the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the contract and its conditions, and the open copy—

¹²and gave them to Baruch, the son of Neriah and grandson of Mahseiah. I gave them to him in the presence of Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed of purchase and of the people who were sitting in the courtyard.

¹³Before them all I said to Baruch,

¹⁴“The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, has ordered you to take these deeds, both the sealed deed of purchase and the open copy, and to place them in a clay jar, so that they may be preserved for years to come.

¹⁵The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, has said that houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.”

Jeremiah's Prayer

¹⁶After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch, I prayed,

¹⁷“Sovereign Lord, you made the earth and the sky by your great power and might; nothing is too difficult for you.

¹⁸You have shown constant love to thousands, but you also punish people for the sins of their parents. You are a great and powerful God; you are the Lord Almighty.

¹⁹You make wise plans and do mighty things; you see everything that people do, and you reward them according to their actions.

²⁰Long ago you performed miracles and wonders in Egypt, and you have continued to perform them to this day, both in Israel and among all the other nations, so that you are now known everywhere.

²¹By means of miracles and wonders that terrified our enemies, you used your power and might to bring your people Israel out of Egypt.

²²You gave them this rich and fertile land, as you had promised their ancestors.

²³But when they came into this land and took possession of it, they did not obey your commands or live according to your teaching; they did nothing that you had ordered them to do. And so you brought all this destruction on them.

²⁴“The Babylonians have built siege mounds around the city to capture it, and they are attacking. War, starvation, and disease will make the city fall into their hands. You can see that all you have said has come true.

²⁵Yet, Sovereign Lord, you are the one who ordered me to buy the field in the presence of witnesses, even though the city is about to be captured by the Babylonians.”

²⁶Then the Lord said to me,

²⁷“I am the Lord, the God of all people. Nothing is too difficult for me.

²⁸I am going to give this city over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia and his army; they will capture it

²⁹and set it on fire. They will burn it down, together with the houses where people have made me angry by burning incense to Baal on the rooftops and by pouring out wine offerings to other gods.

³⁰From the very beginning of their history the people of Israel and the people of Judah have displeased me and made me angry by what they have done.

³¹The people of this city have made me angry and furious from the day it was built. I have decided to destroy it

³²because of all the evil that has been done by the people of Judah and Jerusalem, together with their kings and leaders, their priests and prophets.

³³They turned their backs on me; and though I kept on teaching them, they would not listen and learn.

³⁴They even placed their disgusting idols in the Temple built for my worship, and they have defiled it.

³⁵They have built altars to Baal in Hinnom Valley, to sacrifice their sons and daughters to the god Molech. I did not command them to do this, and it did not even enter my mind that they would do such a thing and make the people of Judah sin.”

A Promise of Hope

³⁶The Lord, the God of Israel, said to me, “Jeremiah, the people are saying that war, starvation, and disease will make this city fall into the hands of the king of Babylonia. Now listen to what else I have to say.

³⁷I am going to gather the people from all the countries where I have scattered them in my anger and fury, and I am going to bring them back to this place and let them live here in safety.

³⁸Then they will be my people, and I will be their God.

³⁹I will give them a single purpose in life: to honor me for all time, for their own good and the good of their descendants.

⁴⁰I will make an eternal covenant with them. I will never stop doing good things for them, and I will make them fear me with all their heart, so that they will never turn away from me.

⁴¹I will take pleasure in doing good things for them, and I will establish them permanently in this land.

⁴²“Just as I have brought this disaster on these people, so I am going to give them all the good things that I have promised.

⁴³The people are saying that this land will be like a desert where neither people nor animals live, and that it will be given over to the Babylonians. But fields will once again be bought in this land.

⁴⁴People will buy them, and the deeds will be signed, sealed, and witnessed. This will take place in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah, and in the towns in the hill country, in the foothills, and in southern Judah. I will restore the people to their land. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

The War between Nebuchadnezzar and Arphaxad

¹While King Nebuchadnezzar was ruling over the Assyrians from his capital city of Nineveh, King Arphaxad ruled over the Medes from his capital city of Ecbatana.

²Around Ecbatana King Arphaxad built a wall 105 feet high and 75 feet thick of cut stones; each stone was 4 1/2 feet thick and 9 feet long.

³At each gate he built a tower 150 feet high, with a foundation 90 feet thick.

⁴Each gateway was 105 feet high and 60 feet wide—wide enough for his whole army to march through, with the infantry in formation.

⁵In the twelfth year of his reign King Nebuchadnezzar went to war against King Arphaxad in the large plain around the city of Rages.

⁶Many nations joined forces with King Arphaxad—all the people who lived in the mountains, those who lived along the Tigris, Euphrates, and Hydaspes rivers, as well as those who lived in the plain ruled by King Arioch of Elam. Many nations joined this Chelodite alliance.

⁷Then King Nebuchadnezzar of Assyria sent a message to the Persians and to the people to the west, in the regions of Cilicia, Damascus, Lebanon, Antilebanon, to those along the coast,

⁸and in the regions of Carmel, Gilead, northern Galilee, and Jezreel Valley.

^9-10The message also went to the people living in Samaria and the nearby towns, to those in the area west of the Jordan River as far as the cities of Jerusalem, Bethany, Chelous, and Kadesh, and to the district of Goshen. The message was also taken to the Egyptian cities of Tahpanhes, Rameses, Tanis, and Memphis, and the district up the Nile River to the Ethiopian border.

¹¹But everyone in this whole region ignored King Nebuchadnezzar's appeal and refused to take part in the war. They thought that he had no chance of winning the war, so they were not afraid of him and sent his messengers back disgraced and empty-handed.

¹²This made Nebuchadnezzar so furious that he vowed he would risk his entire kingdom to take revenge on all those people. He vowed that he would put to death the entire population of Cilicia, Damascus, Syria, Moab, Ammon, Judah, and Egypt—everyone from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.

¹³In the seventeenth year of his reign King Nebuchadnezzar led his army into battle against King Arphaxad. He defeated all of Arphaxad's forces, including his entire cavalry, and all his charioteers.

¹⁴Then Nebuchadnezzar occupied all the towns in the land of Media and advanced against the city of Ecbatana. He captured the city's towers, looted its markets, and made that beautiful city a ruin.

¹⁵He captured King Arphaxad in the mountains around Rages and killed him. After Arphaxad's death,

¹⁶Nebuchadnezzar and his entire army returned to Nineveh with all the loot taken in battle. There they relaxed and feasted for four months.

The War against the Nations in the West

¹In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, on the twenty-second day of the first month of that year, he and his advisers decided to carry out his threat to take revenge on all those countries that had refused to help him.

^2-3The king called his general staff and senior officers together and reported in detail how those countries had betrayed him. He and his officers agreed that everyone who had refused to help him in the war should be put to death. Then he described to them his plan of attack.

⁴At the close of the meeting, Nebuchadnezzar gave the following command to Holofernes, who was the general in command of his armies and second in command to the king:

⁵I, Nebuchadnezzar, the great king and ruler of all the earth, command you to choose some experienced soldiers: 120,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry.

⁶Then attack the lands to the west because they refused to respond to my appeal for help.

⁷Warn them that they must prepare their offerings of earth and water to show that they have surrendered unconditionally. I will make them feel the full force of my anger and completely destroy them. My armies will march over every foot of their land and plunder it as they go.

⁸I will fill the valleys with their dead bodies and will choke up every stream and river with so many corpses that they will all overflow.

⁹I will take captive all those who are left alive and carry them off to the ends of the earth.

¹⁰But you, Holofernes, are ordered to go ahead of me and occupy all their territories in advance. If they surrender to you, hold them for me until I come to punish them.

¹¹But if they resist, do not spare them. Kill them and loot the entire region under your control.

¹²I have taken a solemn vow, and at the risk of my life and my royal power I am determined to do what I have vowed to do.

¹³Do not disobey me in any way. I am your king; remember that, and carry out without delay every order that I have given you.

The Campaign of Holofernes

¹⁴So Holofernes left the king and called together all the commanders, generals, and officers of the Assyrian army.

¹⁵Just as the king had ordered, he chose 120,000 of the best infantrymen and 12,000 of the best mounted archers

¹⁶and arranged them in battle formation.

¹⁷He also took along a very large number of camels, donkeys, and mules to carry the equipment, as well as many sheep, cattle, and goats for food.

¹⁸Every soldier received plenty of rations and a large payment of gold and silver from the royal treasury.

¹⁹Then Holofernes and his entire army set out, advancing ahead of King Nebuchadnezzar. The chariots, the cavalry, and the infantry marched out to overrun the entire western region.

²⁰Other troops went with them. There were so many that it was impossible to count them—they were like a swarm of locusts or like grains of sand in the desert.

²¹Three days after they had left the city of Nineveh, they reached the plains around Bectileth near the mountains north of Cilicia, where they set up camp.

²²From there Holofernes advanced into the hill country with his entire army, his infantry, cavalry, and chariots.

²³He totally destroyed the countries of Libya and Lydia, then plundered all the people of Rassis and the Ishmaelites who lived on the edge of the desert, south of the land of the Chelleans.

²⁴Then Holofernes crossed the Euphrates River and marched through the land of Mesopotamia, completely destroying all the walled towns along the Abron River as far as the sea.

²⁵He seized the territory of Cilicia, killing everyone who resisted him, and went as far as the southern borders of the land of Japheth, near Arabia.

²⁶He surrounded the Midianites, burned down their tents, and slaughtered their sheep.

²⁷Holofernes went down into the plains around Damascus during the wheat harvest, burned all the fields, slaughtered the flocks and herds, looted the towns, devastated the entire countryside, and killed all the young men.

²⁸Panic seized all the people who lived along the Mediterranean Sea, and they shook with fear. Everyone in the towns of Tyre, Sidon, Sur, Ocina, Jamnia, Ashdod, and Ashkelon was terrified.

²⁵What you think is the right road may lead to death.

²⁶A laborer's appetite makes him work harder, because he wants to satisfy his hunger.

²⁷Evil people look for ways to harm others; even their words burn with evil.

²⁸Gossip is spread by wicked people; they stir up trouble and break up friendships.