Another Promise of Hope

¹While I was still in prison in the courtyard, the Lord's message came to me again.

²The Lord, who made the earth, who formed it and set it in place, spoke to me. He whose name is the Lord said,

³“Call to me, and I will answer you; I will tell you wonderful and marvelous things that you know nothing about.

⁴I, the Lord, the God of Israel, say that the houses of Jerusalem and the royal palace of Judah will be torn down as a result of the siege and the attack.

⁵Some will fight against the Babylonians, who will fill the houses with the corpses of those whom I am going to strike down in my anger and fury. I have turned away from this city because of the evil things that its people have done.

⁶But I will heal this city and its people and restore them to health. I will show them abundant peace and security.

⁷I will make Judah and Israel prosperous, and I will rebuild them as they were before.

⁸I will purify them from the sins that they have committed against me, and I will forgive their sins and their rebellion.

⁹Jerusalem will be a source of joy, honor, and pride to me; and every nation in the world will fear and tremble when they hear about the good things that I do for the people of Jerusalem and about the prosperity that I bring to the city.”

¹⁰The Lord said, “People are saying that this place is like a desert, that it has no people or animals living in it. And they are right; the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem are empty; no people or animals live there. But in these places you will hear again

¹¹the shouts of gladness and joy and the happy sounds of wedding feasts. You will hear people sing as they bring thank offerings to my Temple; they will say, ‘Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, because he is good and his love is eternal.’ I will make this land as prosperous as it was before. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

¹²The Lord Almighty said, “In this land that is like a desert and where no people or animals live, there will once again be pastures where shepherds can take their sheep.

¹³In the towns in the hill country, in the foothills, and in southern Judah, in the territory of Benjamin, in the villages around Jerusalem, and in the towns of Judah, shepherds will once again count their sheep. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

¹⁴The Lord said, “The time is coming when I will fulfill the promise that I made to the people of Israel and Judah.

¹⁵At that time I will choose as king a righteous descendant of David. That king will do what is right and just throughout the land.

¹⁶The people of Judah and of Jerusalem will be rescued and will live in safety. The city will be called ‘The Lord Our Salvation.’

¹⁷I, the Lord, promise that there will always be a descendant of David to be king of Israel

¹⁸and that there will always be priests from the tribe of Levi to serve me and to offer burnt offerings, grain offerings, and sacrifices.”

¹⁹The Lord said to me,

²⁰“I have made a covenant with the day and with the night, so that they always come at their proper times; and that covenant can never be broken.

²¹In the same way I have made a covenant with my servant David that he would always have a descendant to be king, and I have made a covenant with the priests from the tribe of Levi that they would always serve me; and those covenants can never be broken.

²²I will increase the number of descendants of my servant David and the number of priests from the tribe of Levi, so that it will be as impossible to count them as it is to count the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.”

²³The Lord said to me,

²⁴“Have you noticed how people are saying that I have rejected Israel and Judah, the two families that I chose? And so they look with contempt on my people and no longer consider them a nation.

²⁵But I, the Lord, have a covenant with day and night, and I have made the laws that control earth and sky.

²⁶And just as surely as I have done this, so I will maintain my covenant with Jacob's descendants and with my servant David. I will choose one of David's descendants to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will be merciful to my people and make them prosperous again.”

A Message for Zedekiah

¹The Lord spoke to me when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia and his army, supported by troops from all the nations and races that were subject to him, were attacking Jerusalem and its nearby towns.

²The Lord, the God of Israel, told me to go and say to King Zedekiah of Judah, “I, the Lord, will hand this city over to the king of Babylonia, and he will burn it down.

³You will not escape; you will be captured and handed over to him. You will see him face-to-face and talk to him in person; then you will go to Babylonia.

⁴Zedekiah, listen to what I say about you. You will not be killed in battle.

⁵You will die in peace, and as people burned incense when they buried your ancestors, who were kings before you, in the same way they will burn incense for you. They will mourn over you and say, ‘Our king is dead!’ I, the Lord, have spoken.”

⁶Then I gave this message to King Zedekiah in Jerusalem

⁷while the army of the king of Babylonia was attacking the city. The army was also attacking Lachish and Azekah, the only other fortified cities left in Judah.

Deceitful Treatment of Slaves

⁸King Zedekiah and the people of Jerusalem had made an agreement to set free

⁹their Hebrew slaves, both male and female, so that no one would have an Israelite as a slave.

¹⁰All the people and their leaders agreed to free their slaves and never to enslave them again. They did set them free,

¹¹but later they changed their minds, took them back, and forced them to become slaves again.

¹²Then the Lord,

¹³the God of Israel, told me to say to the people: “I made a covenant with your ancestors when I rescued them from Egypt and set them free from slavery. I told them that

¹⁴every seven years they were to set free any Hebrew slave who had served them for six years. But your ancestors would not pay any attention to me or listen to what I said.

¹⁵Just a few days ago you changed your minds and did what pleased me. All of you agreed to set all Israelites free, and you made a covenant in my presence, in the Temple where I am worshiped.

¹⁶But then you changed your minds again and dishonored me. All of you took back the slaves whom you had set free as they desired, and you forced them into slavery again.

¹⁷So now, I, the Lord, say that you have disobeyed me; you have not given all Israelites their freedom. Very well, then, I will give you freedom: the freedom to die by war, disease, and starvation. I will make every nation in the world horrified at what I do to you.

^18-19The officials of Judah and of Jerusalem, together with the palace officials, the priests, and all the leaders, made a covenant with me by walking between the two halves of a bull that they had cut in two. But they broke the covenant and did not keep its terms. So I will do to these people what they did to the bull.

²⁰I will hand them over to their enemies, who want to kill them, and their corpses will be eaten by birds and wild animals.

²¹I will also hand over King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials to those who want to kill them. I will hand them over to the Babylonian army, which has stopped its attack against you.

²²I will give the order, and they will return to this city. They will attack it, capture it, and burn it down. I will make the towns of Judah like a desert where no one lives. I, the Lord, have spoken.”

The Peace Delegation to King Nebuchadnezzar

¹All these nations sent a peace delegation to King Nebuchadnezzar with this message:

²We remain loyal to you, great King Nebuchadnezzar; we are ready to serve you and obey any command that you may wish to give us.

³Our buildings, all our land, our wheat fields, our livestock, and our tents are at your disposal; use them in any way you wish.

⁴Our people will be your slaves, and you may use our towns as you please.

⁵After the peace delegation had brought this message,

⁶Holofernes led Nebuchadnezzar's army down to the Mediterranean coast. He stationed guards in all the walled towns and selected certain local men in each of the towns as reserve troops.

⁷The people in the towns and in the surrounding countryside welcomed Holofernes by wearing wreaths of flowers and dancing to the beat of drums.

⁸But Holofernes destroyed all their places of worship and cut down their sacred trees. He had been ordered to destroy all the gods of the land so that all the nations and tribes would worship only Nebuchadnezzar and pray to him as a god.

⁹Then Holofernes passed through Jezreel Valley near Dothan, which faces the main ridge of the mountains of Judah,

¹⁰and set up camp between Geba and Scythopolis. He stayed there for a month in order to get supplies for his army.

The Israelite Plan for Defense

¹The people of Judah heard what Holofernes, the commander of King Nebuchadnezzar's armies, had done to the other nations. They heard how he had looted and destroyed all their temples,

²and they were terrified of him and afraid of what he might do to Jerusalem and to the Temple of the Lord their God.

³They had only recently returned home to Judah from exile and had just rededicated the Temple and its utensils and its altar after they had been defiled.

⁴So they sent a warning to the whole region of Samaria and to the towns of Kona, Beth Horon, Belmain, Jericho, Choba, and Aesora, and to Salem Valley.

⁵They immediately occupied the mountaintops, fortified the villages on the mountains, and stored up food in preparation for war. It was fortunate that they had recently harvested their fields.

⁶The High Priest Joakim, who was in Jerusalem at that time, wrote to the people in the towns of Bethulia and Betomesthaim, which face Jezreel Valley near Dothan.

⁷He ordered them to occupy the mountain passes which led into the land of Judah, where it would be easy to withstand an attack, since the approach was only wide enough for two people at a time to pass.

⁸The Israelites carried out the orders given to them by the High Priest Joakim and the Council which met in Jerusalem.

Prayer before the War

⁹The leaders of Israel prayed earnestly to God and fasted.

¹⁰They put on sackcloth—they and their wives, their children, their livestock, and every resident foreigner, every slave and hired laborer.

^11-12They also covered the altar with sackcloth. Then all the men, women, and children in Jerusalem lay face down on the ground in front of the Temple; they lay there in the Lord's presence, all in sackcloth, their heads covered with ashes. They joined together in earnest prayer to the God of Israel, begging him not to let their children be captured, their wives carried off, or their home towns destroyed. They pleaded with him not to give the Gentiles the satisfaction of destroying the Temple and dishonoring it.

¹³The Lord heard their prayers and saw their distress. For many days the people of Judah and Jerusalem continued their fast in front of the Temple of the Lord Almighty.

¹⁴The High Priest Joakim, the priests, and all the others who served in the Lord's Temple, wore sackcloth when they offered the daily burnt offering, the freewill offerings of the people, and the offerings made to fulfill a vow.

¹⁵They put ashes on their turbans and cried out in prayer to the Lord, begging him to have mercy on the whole nation.

The War Council in the Camp of Holofernes

¹When Holofernes, the Assyrian general, heard that the Israelites had prepared for war, blocked the mountain passes, fortified the mountaintops, and set up roadblocks in the plains,

²he boiled over with anger. He called together all the Moabite rulers, all the Ammonite generals, and all the governors of the region along the Mediterranean coast

³and said to them, You live in Canaan, so tell me about the people who live in these mountains. Which cities do they occupy? How large is their army? What is the source of their power and strength? Who is the king who leads their army?

⁴Why have they alone, of all the people in the west, refused to come out and surrender to me?

The Speech of Achior

⁵Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, answered Holofernes, Sir, if you will please be so kind as to listen to me, I will tell you the truth about these people who live in the mountains near your camp. I will not lie to you.

⁶These people are the descendants of some Babylonians

^7-8who abandoned the ways of their ancestors in order to worship the God of heaven. Finally, they were driven out of their land because they refused to worship their ancestors' gods. Then they fled to Mesopotamia, where they settled and lived for a long time.

⁹Afterward, their god told them to leave Mesopotamia and go to the land of Canaan, where they settled and became very rich in gold, silver, and livestock.

¹⁰Later, when a famine struck all the land of Canaan, these Israelites, as they were later called, went down to Egypt and stayed there as long as there was enough food. While they were there, they became a large nation with so many people that they could not be counted.

¹¹So the king of Egypt turned against them. He took advantage of them and put them to work making bricks. He oppressed them and made them slaves.

¹²But they prayed to their god, and he sent disasters that left the Egyptians helpless. When the Egyptians drove them out of the country,

¹³their god dried up the Red Sea in front of them,

¹⁴and then led them along the way to Sinai and Kadesh Barnea. The Israelites drove out all the people who lived in the southern part of Canaan,

¹⁵occupied the land of the Amorites, wiped out the people of Heshbon, crossed the Jordan River, and took possession of the entire mountain region.

¹⁶They drove out the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Shechemites, and all the Girgashites. The Israelites have now lived in these mountains for a long time.

¹⁷Their god hates wickedness, and as long as they did not sin against him, they prospered.

¹⁸But when they disobeyed him, they suffered heavy losses in many wars and were finally taken away as captives to a foreign country. The temple of their god was leveled and their cities were occupied by their enemies.

¹⁹But now that they have returned to their god, they have come back home from the countries where they had been scattered. They have again taken possession of the city of Jerusalem, where their temple is, and have resettled in the mountains that had remained uninhabited.

²⁰Sir, if these people are now sinning against their god, even unknowingly, and if we can be sure that they are guilty of some offense, we can successfully attack them.

²¹But if they have not disobeyed the law of their god, then you should leave them alone, or he will defend them, and we will be disgraced before the whole world.

The Reaction of the Crowd

²²When Achior had finished his speech, all the people standing around the tent began to protest. Holofernes' own senior officers, as well as the Moabites and those from the Mediterranean coast, demanded that Achior be put to death.

²³Why should we be afraid of these Israelites? they asked. They are weak; they can't put up a strong defense.

²⁴Let's go ahead! General Holofernes, your great army will slaughter them easily.

²⁹Violent people deceive their friends and lead them to disaster.

³⁰Watch out for people who grin and wink at you; they have thought of something evil.

³¹Long life is the reward of the righteous; gray hair is a glorious crown.

³²It is better to be patient than powerful. It is better to win control over yourself than over whole cities.

³³People cast lots to learn God's will, but God himself determines the answer.