Immerse: Prophets - Flipbook - Page 283
34:18–35:14
J eremiah
271
shrugged off your oath and defiled my name by taking back the men and
women you had freed, forcing them to be slaves once again.
“Therefore, this is what the Lord says: Since you have not obeyed me
by setting your countrymen free, I will set you free to be destroyed by war,
disease, and famine. You will be an object of horror to all the nations of the
earth. Because you have broken the terms of our covenant, I will cut you
apart just as you cut apart the calf when you walked between its halves to
solemnize your vows. Yes, I will cut you apart, whether you are officials of
Judah or Jerusalem, court officials, priests, or common people—for you
have broken your oath. I will give you to your enemies, and they will kill
you. Your bodies will be food for the vultures and wild animals.
“I will hand over King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials to the army of
the king of Babylon. And although they have left Jerusalem for a while, I
will call the Babylonian armies back again. They will fight against this city
and will capture it and burn it down. I will see to it that all the towns of
Judah are destroyed, with no one living there.”
This is the message the Lord gave Jeremiah when Jehoiakim son of Jo
siah was king of Judah: “Go to the settlement where the families of the
Recabites live, and invite them to the Lord’s Temple. Take them into one
of the inner rooms, and offer them some wine.”
So I went to see Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah and grandson of Habazziniah
and all his brothers and sons—representing all the Recabite families. I
took them to the Temple, and we went into the room assigned to the sons
of Hanan son of Igdaliah, a man of God. This room was located next to
the one used by the Temple officials, directly above the room of Maas eiah
son of Shallum, the Temple gatekeeper.
I set cups and jugs of wine before them and invited them to have a drink,
but they refused. “No,” they said, “we don’t drink wine, because our an
cestor Jehonadab son of Recab gave us this command: ‘You and your de
scendants must never drink wine. And do not build houses or plant crops
or vineyards, but always live in tents. If you follow these commands, you
will live long, good lives in the land.’ So we have obeyed him in all these
things. We have never had a drink of wine to this day, nor have our wives,
our sons, or our daughters. We haven’t built houses or owned vineyards or
farms or planted crops. We have lived in tents and have fully obeyed all the
commands of Jehonadab, our ancestor. But when King Nebuchadnezzar of
Babylon attacked this country, we were afraid of the Babylonian and Syr
ian armies. So we decided to move to Jerusalem. That is why we are here.”
Then the Lord gave this message to Jeremiah: “This is what the Lord
