Jeremiah 37:1–10

Zedekiah’s Request to Jeremiah

37^*King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia made Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah in the place of Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim. ²But neither Zedekiah nor his officials nor the people obeyed the message which the Lord had given me.

³King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to ask me to pray to the Lord our God on behalf of our nation. ⁴I had not yet been put in prison and was still moving about freely among the people. ⁵The Babylonian army had been besieging Jerusalem, but when they heard that the Egyptian army had crossed the Egyptian border, they retreated.

⁶Then the Lord, the God of Israel, told me ⁷to say to Zedekiah, “The Egyptian army is on its way to help you, but it will return home. ⁸Then the Babylonians will come back, attack the city, capture it, and burn it down. ⁹I, the Lord, warn you not to deceive yourselves into thinking that the Babylonians will not come back, because they will. ¹⁰Even if you defeat the whole Babylonian army, so that only wounded men are left, lying in their tents, those men would still get up and burn this city to the ground.”