The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Prophecy of Jeremias
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Chapter 27
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At the beginning of the new king’s✻ reign in Juda, that was son to Josias, word came from the Lord to Jeremias after this fashion.
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The Lord bade me make myself a yoke, band and bar, and put it about my neck;
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let it be the answer, he said, given by Sedecias, king of Juda, to the envoys that have come to him from the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon.
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This message thou shalt give them, for their masters, from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
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My strength it was, the exertion of my power, that made earth, made man and beast to walk on it; and I give dominion over it to the man on whom my choice falls.
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And all these countries I have handed over to my servant Nabuchodonosor, king of Babylon, making even the wild beasts subject to him;
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all the world must obey him, and his son and his grandson after him, until the time has run out, for him and for his land both; nations a many and great kings shall pay him their homage.
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Nation or people that will not be vassal to Nabuchodonosor, will not bow to Babylon’s yoke, I will punish with sword and famine and pestilence, until the last of them is left at his mercy.
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Do not listen, then, to those prophets of yours, diviner and dreamer, soothsayer and sorcerer, who bid you resist the king of Babylon;
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whither will they bring you, these lying prophecies? To a land far from your home, to sentence of banishment, and your undoing.
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But let a nation once bow to the king of Babylon’s yoke, and become his vassal, to that nation, the Lord says, I will leave its own fields to till, its own home to dwell in.
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All this message I gave to Sedecias, king of Juda; Your lives shall be spared, I told him, if you will only bow your necks to the yoke, letting king and people of Babylon be your masters;
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will you court death, king and people at once, from sword, famine, and pestilence, the Lord’s threat against all who refuse submission?
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To the prophets who declare you shall never be vassals of Babylon, give no heed; they are cheating you with lies;
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warrant from me they have none, yet falsely claim to be my spokesmen, to your own casting away and undoing, and theirs moreover who so prophesy.
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And this message I gave from the Lord to priests and people: Do not listen to those prophets of yours, who bid you expect the speedy return of the sacred treasures from Babylon. These are but lying prophecies;
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do not let them deter you from submitting to the king of Babylon, your only hope of safety; shall this city become a desert?
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Prophets if they be, spokesmen of the Lord if they be, let them rather plead with him, the Lord of hosts, that the treasures still left in temple and palace and city may not find their way to Babylon too.
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Doom the Lord of hosts has decreed upon all of them, pillars and brazen basin and stands, and those other treasures that remained here untouched,
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when Joachim’s son Jechonias, that once reigned in Juda, was carried off to Nabuchodonosor’s capital at Babylon, with all the notables of this city and realm.
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This he would have you know, he, the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, that all the treasures left in temple, palace or city
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shall be carried away to Babylon in their turn. There they shall remain, the Lord says, till the time comes for demanding an account of them, for bringing them back and setting them up again where they stood before.
