Through the Bible – Day 305

I am the All-Powerful LORD God of Israel, ₅and with my power I created the earth, its people, and all animals. I decide who will rule the earth, _6-7and I have chosen my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to rule all nations, including yours. I will even let him rule the wild animals. All nations will be slaves of Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and his grandson. Then many nations will join together, and their kings will be powerful enough to make slaves of the Babylonians.

₈This yoke stands for the power of King Nebuchadnezzar, and I will destroy any nation that refuses to obey him. Nebuchadnezzar will attack, and many will die in battle or from hunger and disease. ₉You might have people in your kingdom who claim they can tell the future by magic or by talking with the dead or by dreams or messages from a god. But don't pay attention if any of them tell you not to obey Nebuchadnezzar. ₁₀If you listen to such lies, I will have you dragged far from your country and killed. ₁₁But if you and your nation are willing to obey Nebuchadnezzar, I will let you stay in your country, and your people will continue to live and work on their farms.

Zedekiah, if you and the people of Judah want to stay alive, you must obey Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. ₁₃But if you refuse, then you and your people will die from war, hunger, and disease, just as the LORD has warned. ₁₄Your prophets have told you that you don't need to obey Nebuchadnezzar, but don't listen to their lies. ₁₅Those prophets claim to be speaking for the LORD, but he didn't send them. They are lying! If you do what they say, he will have both you and them dragged off to another country and killed. The LORD has spoken.

Don't listen to the prophets when they say that very soon the Babylonians will return the things they took from my temple. Those prophets are lying! ₁₇If you choose to obey the king of Babylonia, you will live. But if you listen to those prophets, this whole city will be nothing but a pile of rubble.

₁₈If I really had spoken to those prophets, they would know what I am going to do. Then they would be begging me not to let everything else be taken from the temple and the king's palace and the rest of Jerusalem. _19-21After all, when Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin to Babylonia as a prisoner, he didn't take everything of value from Jerusalem. He left the bronze pillars, the huge bronze bowl called the Sea, and the moveable bronze stands in the temple, and he left a lot of other valuable things in the palace and in the rest of Jerusalem.

But now I, the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, say that all these things ₂₂will be taken to Babylonia, where they will remain until I decide to bring them back to Jerusalem. I, the LORD, have spoken.

I am the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, and I will smash the yoke that Nebuchadnezzar put on the necks of the nations to make them his slaves. ₃And within two years, I will bring back to Jerusalem everything that he took from my temple and carried off to Babylonia. ₄King Jehoiachin and the other people who were taken from Judah to Babylonia will be allowed to come back here as well. All this will happen because I will smash the power of the king of Babylonia!

₆Hananiah, I hope the LORD will do exactly what you said. I hope he does bring back everything the Babylonians took from the temple, and that our people who were taken to Babylonia will be allowed to return home. ₇But let me remind you and everyone else ₈that long before we were born, prophets were saying powerful kingdoms would be struck by war, disaster, and disease. ₉Now you are saying we will have peace. We will just have to wait and see if that is really what the LORD has said.

I am the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel. You smashed a wooden yoke, but I will replace it with one made of iron. I will put iron yokes on all the nations, and they will have to do what King Nebuchadnezzar commands. I will even let him rule the wild animals.

_15-16Hananiah, I have never sent you to speak for me. And yet you have talked my people into believing your lies and rebelling against me. So now I will send you—I'll send you right off the face of the earth! You will die before this year is over.

I had you taken from Jerusalem to Babylonia. Now I tell you ₅to settle there and build houses. Plant gardens and eat what you grow in them. ₆Get married and have children, then help your sons find wives and help your daughters find husbands, so they can have children as well. I want your numbers to grow, not to get smaller.

₇Pray for peace in Babylonia and work hard to make it prosperous. The more successful that nation is, the better off you will be.

_8-9Some of your people there in Babylonia are fortune-tellers, and you have asked them to tell you what will happen in the future. But they will only lead you astray. And don't let the prophets fool you, either. They speak in my name, but they are liars. I have not spoken to them.

₁₀After Babylonia has been the strongest nation for seventy years, I will be kind and bring you back to Jerusalem, just as I have promised. ₁₁I will bless you with a future filled with hope—a future of success, not of suffering. ₁₂You will turn back to me and ask for help, and I will answer your prayers. ₁₃You will worship me with all your heart, and I will be with you ₁₄and accept your worship. Then I will gather you from all the nations where I scattered you, and you will return to Jerusalem.

₁₅You feel secure, because you think I have sent prophets to speak for me in Babylonia.

_16-19But I have been sending prophets to the people of Judah for a long time, and the king from David's family and the people who are left in Jerusalem and Judah still don't obey me. So I, the LORD All-Powerful, will keep attacking them with war and hunger and disease, until they are as useless as rotten figs. I will force them to leave the land, and all nations will be disgusted and shocked at what happens to them. The nations will sneer and make fun of them and use the names “Judah” and “Jerusalem” as curse words.

And you have not obeyed me, even though ₂₀I had you taken from Jerusalem to Babylonia. But you had better listen to me now. _21-23You think Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah are prophets because they claim to speak for me. But they are lying! I haven't told them anything. They are also committing other horrible sins in your community, such as sleeping with the wives of their friends. So I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar, who will put them to death while the rest of you watch. And in the future, when you want to put a curse on someone, you will say, “I pray that the LORD will kill you in the same way the king of Babylonia burnt Zedekiah and Ahab to death!”

₂₆After the death of Jehoiada the priest, the LORD chose you to be the priest in charge of the temple security force. You know that anyone who acts mad and pretends to be a prophet should be arrested and put in chains and iron collars. ₂₇Jeremiah from the town of Anathoth is pretending to be a prophet there in Jerusalem, so why haven't you punished him? ₂₈He even wrote a letter to the people here in Babylonia, saying we would be here a long time. He told us to build homes and to plant gardens and grow our own food.

I, the LORD, have not chosen Shemaiah to be one of my prophets, and he has misled you by telling lies in my name. ₃₂He has even talked you into disobeying me. So I will punish Shemaiah. He and his descendants won't live to see the good things I will do for my people. I, the LORD, have spoken.