The people do not obey the Lord's message

42 All the army officers went to speak to the prophet Jeremiah. They included Kareah's son Johanan and Hoshaiah's son Jezaniah. All the people went with them, important people and ordinary people. ² They said to Jeremiah, ‘Please listen to us. Pray to the Lord your God for those of us who remain alive. You can see that only a few of us remain from the many people that we were before. ³ Please ask the Lord to tell us where we should go. Ask him what we should do.’

⁴ The prophet Jeremiah replied, ‘I agree to do that. I will pray to the Lord your God, as you have asked me to do. I will tell you everything that the Lord says to answer you. I will not hide anything from you.’

⁵ They said to Jeremiah, ‘We promise to do everything that the Lord sends you to say to us. We ask the Lord to listen to our promise. May he punish us if we do not do what we have promised to do. ⁶ We have asked you to pray to the Lord our God for us. We will obey what he tells us to do. We will obey him whether we like what he tells us, or whether we do not like it. We will obey him because we want to enjoy a good life.’

⁷ Ten days after that, the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. ⁸ So Jeremiah told Kareah's son Johanan, the other army officers and all the people to come to him. That included everyone, important people and ordinary people. ⁹ Jeremiah said to them, ‘You sent me to ask the Lord, Israel's God, what you should do. He says this to you: ¹⁰ “You should stay here in the land of Judah. If you do that, I will build you up and make you strong again. I will not knock you down. I will help you to grow in the land, like plants with good roots. I will not pull you up. I have punished you with terrible trouble, and that makes me very sad. So now I will help you. ¹¹ You are afraid of the king of Babylon now, but do not be afraid of him any more. I am with you to help you. I will save you and I will rescue you from his power. I, the Lord, promise you this. ¹² I will be kind and I will help you. I will cause the king of Babylon to be kind to you. He will let you return to your own land as your home.”

¹³ You must not refuse to obey this message from the Lord your God. Do not say, “We will not stay here in this land.” ¹⁴ Do not say, “We refuse to stay here. Instead, we will go to live in Egypt. There, we will not have trouble from wars. We will not hear the noise of trumpets as people fight battles. We will not be hungry because there is no food.” ¹⁵ If you say those things, then the Lord has a message for you, you people who remain in Judah. The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “If you decide to go and live in Egypt, I will cause you to have the same troubles there. ¹⁶ You are afraid of wars here, but I will cause wars to hurt you in Egypt. You worry that you might be hungry here, but I will make you hungry in Egypt. Finally, you will die in Egypt. ¹⁷ All the people who decide to go and live in Egypt will die there. War, famine or disease will kill everyone. Nobody will escape from the terrible trouble that I will send. Nobody will remain alive.”

¹⁸ The Lord Almighty, Israel's God, says, “If you go to Egypt, I will be very angry with you. I punished the people of Jerusalem because I was very angry with them. I will be as angry as that with you, if you go to Egypt. Other people will think that you are disgusting. They will insult you. They will use your name as a curse, because God has cursed you. You will never see this land of Judah again.”

¹⁹ Listen to me, you people who still remain in Judah. The Lord has said to you, “Do not go to Egypt.” You must understand that I am now warning you. ²⁰ You made a terrible mistake when you asked me to pray to the Lord your God for you. You told me, “Tell us everything that the Lord our God says, and we will do it.” ²¹ Today I have told you what he said. But you still do not want to obey the Lord. You will not do what he sent me to tell you. ²² So now I tell you this: When you go to the place where you want to live, war, famine or disease will kill you.’