Jeremiah 24

Two Baskets of Figs

24Yahweh showed me, and look, there were two baskets of figs placed before^a the temple of Yahweh—after Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had deported Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, with the officials of Judah, and the craftsmen, and the smiths,^b from Jerusalem and had brought them to Babylon. ²The one basket had very good figs, like early figs,^c and the other basket had very bad figs that could not be eaten because of their bad quality. ³And Yahweh asked me, “What are you seeing, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs—the good figs, very good, and the bad figs, very bad, that cannot be eaten because of their bad quality.”

⁴Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,^{d 5}“Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles^e of Judah whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. ⁶For I will set my eyes^f on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. And I will build them and not annihilate them, and I will plant them and not uproot them. ⁷And I will give to them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh, and they will be my people,^g and I will be their God,^h for they will return to me with the whole of their heart.

⁸But like the bad figs that cannot be eaten because of their bad quality—for thus says Yahweh—so I will treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his officials, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt. ⁹And I will make them as a terror, an evil to all the kingdoms of the earth, as a disgrace and a proverb, as a taunt and a curse, in all the places where I will drive them. ¹⁰And I will send among them the sword, the famine, and the plague, until they perish from the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.’ ”ⁱ