¹⁵ A large crowd of Judah's people listened to Jeremiah. They came from the places where they now lived in the north and the south of Egypt. Some men were there who knew that their wives were offering sacrifices to other gods. Those men and their wives said to Jeremiah, ¹⁶ ‘We do not believe that your message really comes from the Lord. ¹⁷ So we will continue to do what we have promised to do. We will make sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven. We will pour out drink offerings to her.^[a] That is what our ancestors, our kings and our leaders did when we lived in Jerusalem and in the other towns of Judah. When we did that, we had plenty of food to eat. We enjoyed a good life and we had no troubles.