Jeremiah Warns Against Going to Egypt

42 Then all the captains of the forces, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least even to the greatest came near, ² and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Please let our supplication be accepted before you, and pray for us to the Lord your God, even for all this remnant. For we are left but a few out of many, as your eyes now see us. ³ Pray that the Lord your God may show us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do.”

⁴ Then Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you. I will pray to the Lord your God according to your words. And it shall come to pass, that whatever the Lord will answer you, I will declare it to you. I will keep nothing back from you.”

⁵ Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us, if we do not act according to all things for which the Lord your God shall send you to us. ⁶ Whether it is good or whether it is bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send you so that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.”

⁷ At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. ⁸ Then he called Johanan the son of Kareah and all the captains of the forces that were with him and all the people from the least even to the greatest, ⁹ and said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your supplication before Him: ¹⁰ If you will still abide in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down, and I will plant you and not pluck you up; for I will relent of the disaster that I have brought on you. ¹¹ Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon of whom you are now afraid. Do not be afraid of him, says the Lord. For I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand. ¹² I will show mercies to you so that he may have mercy on you and cause you to return to your own land.

¹³ “But if you say, ‘We will not dwell in this land,’ so as not to obey the voice of the Lord your God, ¹⁴ saying, ‘No, but we will go into the land of Egypt where we shall see no war, nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger for bread, and there we will dwell,’ ¹⁵ now therefore hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: If you wholly set your faces to enter Egypt, and go to dwell there, ¹⁶ then it shall come to pass that the sword which you feared shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt and the famine of which you were afraid shall follow close after you there in Egypt. And there you shall die. ¹⁷ So it shall be with all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there. They shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. And none of them shall remain or escape from the disaster that I will bring upon them. ¹⁸ For thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: As My anger and My fury have been poured out upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so will My fury be poured out upon you when you go to Egypt. And you will be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach. And you shall see this place no more.

¹⁹ “The Lord has said concerning you, O remnant of Judah, Do not go into Egypt! Know certainly that I have admonished you this day. ²⁰ For you have only deceived yourselves when you sent me to the Lord your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the Lord our God. And according to all that the Lord our God shall say, so declare to us, and we will do it.’ ²¹ Now I have this day declared it to you. But you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God, or anything for which He has sent me to you. ²² Now therefore certainly know that you will die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, in the place wherever you desire to go and to sojourn.”