Parable of the Baskets of Figs

24 Adonai showed me, all of a sudden, there were two baskets of figs set before the Temple of Adonai. It was after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had taken away into exile Jeconiah son of King Jehoiakim of Judah and the princes of Judah, along with the craftsmen and smiths from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon.

² One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe, but the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. ³ Then Adonai said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”

So I said, “Figs—the good figs are very good, but the bad are very bad, and cannot be eaten, they are so bad.”

⁴ Then the word of Adonai came to me, saying, ⁵ thus says Adonai, the God of Israel: “Like these good figs, so will I regard the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place to the land of the Chaldeans, as good. ⁶ I will set My eyes on them as good. I will bring them back to this land, and I will build them up and not pull them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. ⁷ Then I will give them a heart to know Me—for I am Adonai—and they will be My people, and I will be their God.^[a] For they will return to Me with their whole heart.

⁸ “Now as for the bad figs, which cannot be eaten they are so bad”—surely thus says Adonai—“so I will give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, his princes and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, as well as those dwelling in the land of Egypt. ⁹ I will even give them as a horror, as an evil thing, among all the kingdoms of the earth—as a disgrace and a proverb, a taunt and a curse—in all places where I will drive them. ¹⁰ I will also send the sword, famine and pestilence among them, until they be consumed from off the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.”