The Good and the Rotten Figs

1After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken away into exile Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the officials of Judah with the craftsmen and smiths from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon, Yahweh showed me: behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of Yahweh! 2One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, and the other basket had very rotten figs which could not be eaten due to rottenness. 3Then Yahweh said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs, the good figs, very good; and the rotten figs, very rotten, which cannot be eaten due to rottenness.”

4Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, 5“Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will recognize as good the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans. 6For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will return them to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not uproot them. 7I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am Yahweh; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

8‘But like the rotten figs which cannot be eaten due to rottenness—indeed, thus says Yahweh—so I will give over Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and the ones who inhabit the land of Egypt. 9I will give them over to be a terror and an evil for all the kingdoms of the earth, as a reproach and a proverb, a byword and a curse in all places where I will banish them. 10I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence upon them until they come to an end from being upon the land which I gave to them and their fathers.’”