Zedekiah's Request to Jeremiah

¹King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia made Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah in the place of Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim.

²But neither Zedekiah nor his officials nor the people obeyed the message which the Lord had given me.

³King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to ask me to pray to the Lord our God on behalf of our nation.

⁴I had not yet been put in prison and was still moving about freely among the people.

⁵The Babylonian army had been besieging Jerusalem, but when they heard that the Egyptian army had crossed the Egyptian border, they retreated.

⁶Then the Lord, the God of Israel, told me

⁷to say to Zedekiah, “The Egyptian army is on its way to help you, but it will return home.

⁸Then the Babylonians will come back, attack the city, capture it, and burn it down.

⁹I, the Lord, warn you not to deceive yourselves into thinking that the Babylonians will not come back, because they will.

¹⁰Even if you defeat the whole Babylonian army, so that only wounded men are left, lying in their tents, they would still get up and burn this city to the ground.”

Jeremiah Is Arrested and Imprisoned

¹¹The Babylonian army retreated from Jerusalem because the Egyptian army was approaching.

¹²So I started to leave Jerusalem and go to the territory of Benjamin to take possession of my share of the family property.

¹³But when I reached the Benjamin Gate, the officer in charge of the soldiers on duty there, a man by the name of Irijah, the son of Shelemiah and grandson of Hananiah, stopped me and said, “You are deserting to the Babylonians!”

¹⁴I answered, “That's not so! I'm not deserting.” But Irijah would not listen to me. Instead, he arrested me and took me to the officials.

¹⁵They were furious with me and had me beaten and locked up in the house of Jonathan, the court secretary, whose house had been made into a prison.

¹⁶I was put in an underground cell and kept there a long time.

¹⁷Later on King Zedekiah sent for me, and there in the palace he asked me privately, “Is there any message from the Lord?” “There is,” I answered, and added, “You will be handed over to the king of Babylonia.”

¹⁸Then I asked, “What crime have I committed against you or your officials or this people, to make you put me in prison?

¹⁹What happened to your prophets who told you that the king of Babylonia would not attack you or the country?

²⁰And now, Your Majesty, I beg you to listen to me and do what I ask. Please do not send me back to the prison in Jonathan's house. If you do, I will surely die there.”

²¹So King Zedekiah ordered me to be locked up in the palace courtyard. I stayed there, and each day I was given a loaf of bread from the bakeries until all the bread in the city was gone.

Jeremiah in a Dry Well

¹Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malchiah heard that I was telling the people that

²the Lord had said, “Whoever stays on in the city will die in war or of starvation or disease. But those who go out and surrender to the Babylonians will not be killed; they will at least escape with their life.”

³I was also telling them that the Lord had said, “I am going to give the city to the Babylonian army, and they will capture it.”

⁴Then the officials went to the king and said, “This man must be put to death. By talking like this he is making the soldiers in the city lose their courage, and he is doing the same thing to everyone else left in the city. He is not trying to help the people; he only wants to hurt them.”

⁵King Zedekiah answered, “Very well, then, do what you want to with him; I can't stop you.”

⁶So they took me and let me down by ropes into Prince Malchiah's well, which was in the palace courtyard. There was no water in the well, only mud, and I sank down in it.

⁷However, Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a eunuch who worked in the royal palace, heard that they had put me in the well. At that time the king was holding court at the Benjamin Gate.

⁸So Ebedmelech went there and said to the king,

⁹“Your Majesty, what these men have done is wrong. They have put Jeremiah in the well, where he is sure to die of starvation, since there is no more food in the city.”

¹⁰Then the king ordered Ebedmelech to take with him three men and to pull me out of the well before I died.

¹¹So Ebedmelech went with the men to the palace storeroom and got some worn-out clothing which he let down to me by ropes.

¹²He told me to put the rags under my arms, so that the ropes wouldn't hurt me. I did this,

¹³and they pulled me up out of the well. After that I was kept in the courtyard.

Zedekiah Asks Jeremiah's Advice

¹⁴On another occasion King Zedekiah had me brought to him at the third entrance to the Temple, and he said, “I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the whole truth.”

¹⁵I answered, “If I tell you the truth, you will put me to death, and if I give you advice, you won't pay any attention.”

¹⁶So King Zedekiah promised me in secret, “I swear by the living God, the God who gave us life, that I will not put you to death or hand you over to the men who want to kill you.”

¹⁷Then I told Zedekiah that the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, had said, “If you surrender to the king of Babylonia's officers, your life will be spared, and this city will not be burned down. Both you and your family will be spared.

¹⁸But if you do not surrender, then this city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will burn it down, and you will not escape from them.”

¹⁹But the king answered, “I am afraid of our own people who have deserted to the Babylonians. I may be handed over to them and tortured.”

²⁰I said, “You will not be handed over to them. I beg you to obey the Lord's message; then all will go well with you, and your life will be spared.

²¹But the Lord has shown me in a vision what will happen if you refuse to surrender.

²²In it I saw all the women left in Judah's royal palace being led out to the king of Babylonia's officers. Listen to what they were saying as they went: ‘The king's best friends misled him, they overruled him. And now that his feet have sunk in the mud, his friends have left him.’”

²³Then I added, “All your women and children will be taken out to the Babylonians, and you yourself will not escape from them. You will be taken prisoner by the king of Babylonia, and this city will be burned to the ground.”

²⁴Zedekiah replied, “Don't let anyone know about this conversation, and your life will not be in danger.

²⁵If the officials hear that I have talked with you, they will come and ask you what we said. They will promise not to put you to death if you tell them everything.

²⁶Just tell them you were begging me not to send you back to prison to die there.”

²⁷Then all the officials came and questioned me, and I told them exactly what the king had told me to say. There was nothing else they could do, because no one had overheard the conversation.

²⁸And I was kept in the palace courtyard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

Judith, the Israelite Widow

¹At that time, Judith heard about Uzziah's decision. She was the daughter of Merari, the granddaughter of Ox and the great-granddaughter of Joseph. Joseph's ancestors were Oziel, Elkiah, Ananias, Gideon, Raphaim, Ahitub, Elijah, Hilkiah, Eliab, Nathanael, Salamiel, Sarasadai, and Israel.

²Judith's husband Manasseh, who belonged to the same tribe and clan, had died during the barley harvest.

³He had suffered a sunstroke while in the fields supervising the farm workers and later died in bed at home in Bethulia. He was buried in the family tomb in the field between Dothan and Balamon.

⁴For three years and four months, Judith had lived as a widow.

⁵In her grief she built a little shelter on the roof of her house and lived there, wearing sackcloth.

⁶She fasted during that entire period except when fasting was forbidden: the day before the Sabbath and the Sabbath itself, the eve of the New Moon Festival and the Festival itself, and all the festivals and holidays observed by the people of Israel.

⁷Judith was a very beautiful woman. Her husband had left her gold and silver, servants and slaves, livestock and fields. She continued to supervise the estate,

⁸and no one ever said anything bad about Judith. She was a very religious woman.

Judith Meets with the Town Officials

⁹Judith heard how the people were complaining bitterly against Uzziah, now that the water shortage had broken their morale. She learned that in answer to their complaints he had promised to surrender the town to the Assyrians after five days.

¹⁰Judith sent a slave, the woman who managed her business affairs, to invite Uzziah, Chabris, and Charmis, the town officials, to her home.

¹¹When the officials arrived, Judith said to them, Please listen to me. You are the leaders of the people of Bethulia, but you were wrong to speak to the people as you did today. You should not have made a solemn promise before God that you would surrender the town to our enemies if the Lord did not come to our aid within a few days.

¹²What right do you have to put God to the test as you have done today? Who are you to put yourselves in God's place in dealing with human affairs?

¹³It is the Lord Almighty that you are putting to the test! Will you never learn?

¹⁴There is no way that you can understand what is in the depths of a human heart or find out what a person is thinking. Yet you dare to read God's mind and interpret his thoughts! How can you claim to understand God, the Creator? No, my friends, you must stop arousing the anger of the Lord our God!

¹⁵If he decides not to come to our aid within five days, he still may rescue us at any time he chooses. Or he may let our enemies destroy us.

¹⁶But you must not lay down conditions for the Lord our God! Do you think that he is like one of us? Do you think you can bargain with him or force him to make a decision?

¹⁷No! Instead, we should ask God for his help and wait patiently for him to rescue us. If he wants to, he will answer our cry for help.

¹⁸We do not worship gods made with human hands. Not one of our clans, tribes, towns, or cities has ever done that, even though our ancestors used to do so.

¹⁹That is why God let their enemies kill them and take everything they had. It was a great defeat!

²⁰But since we worship no other God but the Lord, we can hope that he will not reject us or any of our people.

²¹If our town is taken by the enemy, the entire region of Judah will then fall, and our Temple in Jerusalem will be looted. And God will make us pay with our lives for allowing the Temple to be defiled.

²²He will hold us responsible for the slaughter and captivity of our people and for the destruction of the land we have inherited. We will be despised and mocked by the people in those nations to which we will be taken as slaves.

²³We are not going to win the favor of our enemies by surrendering to them now. If we do surrender, the Lord our God will see that we are put to shame.

²⁴No, my friends, we should set an example for our own people. Not only their lives, but the fate of the Temple and the altar depend on us.

²⁵The Lord our God is putting us to the test, just as he tested our ancestors, and we should be thankful for that.

²⁶Remember how he put Abraham and Isaac to the test, and what happened to Jacob while he was working as a shepherd for his uncle Laban in Mesopotamia.

²⁷God is not testing our loyalty as severely as he did theirs. God is not sending this punishment on us as revenge, but as a warning to us who worship him.

²⁸Then Uzziah answered Judith, Everything you have said makes good sense, and no one can argue with it.

²⁹This is not the first time you have shown wisdom. Ever since you were a child, all of us have recognized the soundness and maturity of your judgment.

³⁰But our people are dying of thirst. They forced us to say what we did and to make a solemn promise, which we cannot break.

³¹So now, since you are a deeply religious woman, pray for our people; ask the Lord to send rain to fill our cisterns, so that we can get our strength back.

³²All right, Judith replied, I am going to do something which our Jewish people will never forget.

³³Tonight, the three of you must stand guard at the gate so that my slave woman and I can leave the town. And before the day comes on which you have promised to surrender, the Lord will use me to rescue the people of Israel.

³⁴But you must not ask me what I am going to do; I will explain it to you when it is all over.

³⁵Uzziah and the other officials said to her, You have our blessing. May the Lord our God guide you as you take revenge on our enemies. Then they left Judith's rooftop shelter and returned to their posts.

Judith's Prayer

¹Then Judith put ashes on her head, opened her robe to reveal the sackcloth she was wearing under her clothes, and bowed down with her face to the floor. It was the time that the evening incense was being offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, and Judith prayed in a loud voice:

²O Lord, the God of my ancestor Simeon, remember how you armed Simeon with a sword to take revenge on those foreigners who seized Dinah, who was a virgin, tore off her clothes, and defiled her; they stripped her naked and shamed her; they raped her and disgraced her, even though you had forbidden this.

³That is why you let their leaders be killed—put to death on the same bed where they had raped the woman. You destroyed them all, slaves, princes, and rulers on their thrones.

⁴You let their wives be carried off, their daughters taken captive, and their possessions plundered by the Israelites, your chosen people, who were eager to do your will. Dinah's brothers were furious because of this disgrace to their family, so they called on you for help. O my God, listen to my prayer, the prayer of a widow.

⁵Your hand guided all that happened then, and all that happened before and after. You have planned it all—what is happening now, and what is yet to be. Your plans have always been carried out.

⁶Whatever you want to be done is as good as done. You know in advance all that you will do and what decisions you will make.

⁷Now the Assyrians are stronger than ever; they take pride in their cavalry and their infantry. They rely on their weapons, but they do not know that you, O Lord, are a warrior who ends war. The Lord is your name.

⁸In your anger, use your power to shatter their mighty army. They plan to defile your Temple, where you are worshiped, and to hack off the corners of your altar with their swords.

⁹Look how proud and boastful they are! Pour out your fury upon them! I am only a widow, but give me the strength to carry out my plan.

¹⁰Use my deceitful words to strike them all dead, master and slave alike. Let a woman's strength break their pride.

¹¹Your power does not depend on the size and strength of an army. You are a God who cares for the humble and helps the oppressed. You give support and protection to people who are weak and helpless; you save those who have lost hope.

¹²Now hear my prayer, O God of my ancestor Simeon, the God in whom Israel trusts, ruler of heaven and earth, creator of the rivers and the seas, king of all creation. Hear my prayer and

¹³let my deceitful words wound and kill those who have planned such cruelty against your covenant and your holy Temple, against Mount Zion and the land you have given your people.

¹⁴Make your whole nation and every tribe recognize that you are God, almighty and all-powerful, and that you alone protect the people of Israel!

⁵If you make fun of poor people, you insult the God who made them. You will be punished if you take pleasure in someone's misfortune.

⁶Grandparents are proud of their grandchildren, just as children are proud of their parents.

⁷Respected people do not tell lies, and fools have nothing worthwhile to say.

⁸Some people think a bribe works like magic; they believe it can do anything.