Two Baskets of Figs
4 Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,[d] 5 “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles[e] of Judah whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. 6 For I will set my eyes[f] on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. And I will build them and not annihilate them, and I will plant them and not uproot them. 7 And I will give to them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh, and they will be my people,[g] and I will be their God,[h] for they will return to me with the whole of their heart.
8 But like the bad figs that cannot be eaten because of their bad quality—for thus says Yahweh—so I will treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his officials, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt. 9 And I will make them as a terror, an evil to all the kingdoms of the earth, as a disgrace and a proverb, as a taunt and a curse, in all the places where I will drive them. 10 And I will send among them the sword, the famine, and the plague, until they perish from the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.’”[i]
Footnotes
- Jeremiah 24:1 Literally “to the face of”
- Jeremiah 24:1 Hebrew “smith”
- Jeremiah 24:2 Literally “the figs of the early ripened fruit”
- Jeremiah 24:4 Literally “to say”
- Jeremiah 24:5 Hebrew “exile”
- Jeremiah 24:6 Hebrew “eye”
- Jeremiah 24:7 Literally “they shall be for me as a people”
- Jeremiah 24:7 Literally “I will be for them as God”
- Jeremiah 24:10 Or “fathers”