Jeremiah 24

¹ Yahweh gave me a vision: placed in front of the Temple of Yahweh stood two baskets of figs.[*a] This was after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had led away Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into exile from Jerusalem, with all the nobles of Judah, and the blacksmiths and metalworkers, and had taken them to Babylon.

² One basket contained excellent figs, like those that ripen first; the other contained very bad figs, so bad they were uneatable.

³ Yahweh said to me, ‘What do you see, Jeremiah?’ ‘Figs,’ I answered ‘the good ones excellent, the bad ones very bad, so bad as to be uneatable.’

⁴ Then the word of Yahweh was addressed to me,

⁵ ‘Yahweh, the God of Israel, says this: As these figs are good, so I mean to concern myself with the welfare of the exiles of Judah whom I have sent from this place to the land of the Chaldaeans.

⁶ My eyes will watch over them for their good, to bring them back to this land, to build them up and not to break them down, to plant them and not to tear them up.

⁷ I will give them a heart to acknowledge that I am Yahweh. They shall be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.

⁸ As for the bad figs, the figs so bad as to be uneatable – yes, Yahweh says this – that is how I will treat Zedekiah king of Judah, his nobles and the remnant of Jerusalem: those who have stayed in this land, as also those living in the land of Egypt.

⁹ I will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a thing of shame, a byword, a laughing-stock, a curse in every place where I shall disperse them.

¹⁰ Sword, famine and plague I will send against them until they have vanished from the soil I gave to them and to their ancestors.’