²⁵ The leaders might hear that I have talked with you, and come and say to you, ‘Tell us what you said to the king, and what the king said to you. Do not hide it from us, and we will not kill you.’ ²⁶ Then you must tell them, ‘I was asking the king not to make me return to the house of Jonathan to die there.’” ²⁷ All the leaders did come to Jeremiah to ask him questions. So he said to them everything the king had told him to say. And they stopped speaking with him, because the words he and the king had spoken together had not been heard by anyone else.