¹And these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the deportees, and to the priests and to the prophets and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had deported from Jerusalem to Babylon, ²after the departure of Jeconiah the king, and the queen consort and the eunuchs, and the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen and the blacksmiths from Jerusalem, ³sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. And it said, ⁴“This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the deportees whom I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵‘Build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat their fruit. ⁶Take wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to men, and let them bear sons and daughters, and increase there, and do not decrease. ⁷And strive for the welfare of the city to which I have deported you, and pray for it to the Lord. For in its welfare will be your welfare.’ ⁸For this is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Do not let your prophets who are in your midst or your diviners deceive you, and do not heed your dreams which you have. ⁹For they prophesy in my name falsely to you. I did not send them, says the Lord.’ ¹⁰For this is what the Lord says: ‘It is according to Babylon's fulfilment of seventy years that I will visit you and establish my good word with you, to bring you back to this place. ¹¹For I know the thoughts which I have concerning you, says the Lord, thoughts of welfare and not of trouble, to give you posterity and hope. ¹²And you will call on me, and you will go and pray to me, and I will hear you, ¹³and you will look for me and find me, for you will seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴And I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will reverse your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places to which I drove you out, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I deported you. ¹⁵For you have said, «The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon.» ’ ¹⁶For this is what the Lord says to the king who sits on the throne of David, and to all the people who live in this city, your brothers who did not go out with you in the deportation ¹⁷– this is what the Lord of hosts says – : ‘I am about to send on them the sword, famine and a plague, and I will make them like blighted figs which cannot be eaten because of their putridity. ¹⁸And I will pursue them with the sword and with famine and with a plague, and I will make them a target of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a curse and a desolation, and a laughing stock and an object of contempt among all the nations where I drove them out, ¹⁹because they did not heed my words, says the Lord, who sent my servants to them – the prophets – rising early and sending them, but you did not heed them, says the Lord. ²⁰So hear the word of the Lord, you people, all you deportees whom I sent from Jerusalem to Babylon. ²¹This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah and concerning Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who prophesy falsely to you in my name: «I am about to deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he will strike them down in your sight. ²²And a curse formula will be taken from their example by all the deportees of Judah who are in Babylon, when they say, ‹May the Lord make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted on a fire› » ’, ²³because they committed impiety in Israel, and they committed adultery with the wives of their neighbours, and they spoke a false pronouncement in my name, which I did not command them. And I know, and I am a witness, says the Lord. ²⁴And you shall speak to Shemaiah the Nehelamite and say, ²⁵‘This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel has spoken. He has said, «I will be making an announcement because you have sent letters in your name to all the people who are in Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and to all the priests, saying, ²⁶‹The Lord has appointed you a priest instead of Jehoiada the priest, so that you should be superintendents in the house of the Lord, looking out for everyone behaving like a madman or a man acting like a prophet, so that you put him in prison and in fetters. ²⁷Accordingly now, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah the Anathothite, who was acting like a prophet to you? ²⁸For this is how he sent word to us in Babylon, saying, "It will be long. Build houses and live in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit." › » ’ ” ²⁹And Zephaniah the priest read this letter in the hearing of Jeremiah the prophet. ³⁰Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and said, ³¹“Send word to all the deportees and say, ‘This is what the Lord says to Shemaiah the Nehelamite: «Since Shemaiah has prophesied to you when I did not send him, and he has caused you to trust in a lie, ³²this is what the Lord says: ‹I am about to visit Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his seed. He will not have a man left dwelling among this people, and he will not see the good which I will be doing for my people, says the Lord, for he has spoken deviously against the Lord.› » ’ ”