God

nor will the priests who are Levites ever fail to have a man before Me to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to present sacrifices.”

And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:

“This is what the LORD says: If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that day and night cease to occupy their appointed time,

then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant and with My ministers the Levites who are priests, so that David will not have a son to reign on his throne.

As the hosts of heaven cannot be counted and as the sand on the seashore cannot be measured, so too will I multiply the descendants of My servant David and the Levites who minister before Me.”

Moreover, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:

“Have you not noticed what these people are saying: ‘The LORD has rejected the two families He had chosen’? So they despise My people and no longer regard them as a nation.

This is what the LORD says: If I have not established My covenant with the day and the night and the fixed order of heaven and earth,

then I would also reject the descendants of Jacob and of My servant David, so as not to take from his descendants rulers over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For I will restore them from captivity and will have compassion on them.”

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, all his army, all the earthly kingdoms under his control, and all the other nations were fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding cities.

The LORD, the God of Israel, told Jeremiah to go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and tell him that this is what the LORD says: “Behold, I am about to deliver this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down.

Yet hear the word of the LORD, O Zedekiah king of Judah. This is what the LORD says concerning you: You will not die by the sword;

you will die in peace. As spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who preceded you, so people will burn spices for you and lament, ‘Alas, O master!’ For I Myself have spoken this word, declares the LORD.”

After King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim liberty, the word came to Jeremiah from the LORD

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your forefathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying:

Every seventh year, each of you must free his Hebrew brother who has sold himself to you. He may serve you six years, but then you must let him go free. But your fathers did not listen or incline their ear.

Recently you repented and did what pleased Me; each of you proclaimed freedom for his neighbor. You made a covenant before Me in the house that bears My Name.

But now you have changed your minds and profaned My name. Each of you has taken back the menservants and maidservants whom you had set at liberty to go wherever they wanted, and you have again forced them to be your slaves.

Therefore this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed Me; you have not proclaimed freedom, each man for his brother and for his neighbor. So now I proclaim freedom for you, declares the LORD—freedom to fall by sword, by plague, and by famine! I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

And those who have transgressed My covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before Me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two in order to pass between its pieces.

I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who seek their lives. Their corpses will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

And I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials into the hands of their enemies who seek their lives, to the army of the king of Babylon that had withdrawn from you.

Behold, I am going to give the command, declares the LORD, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it, capture it, and burn it down. And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: