צָוָה

“Indeed,” declares the LORD, “I am against those who prophesy false dreams and retell them to lead My people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent them or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people,” declares the LORD.

“This is what the LORD says: Stand in the courtyard of the house of the LORD and speak all the words I have commanded you to speak to all the cities of Judah who come to worship there. Do not omit a word.

…and as soon as he had finished telling all the people everything the LORD had commanded him to say, the priests and prophets and all the people seized him, shouting, “You must surely die!

Give them a message from the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, to relay to their masters:

For they have committed an outrage in Israel by committing adultery with the wives of their neighbors and speaking lies in My name, which I did not command them to do. I am He who knows, and I am a witness, declares the LORD.”

In their sight I instructed Baruch,

They came in and possessed it, but they did not obey Your voice or walk in Your law. They failed to perform all that You commanded them to do, and so You have brought upon them all this disaster.

They have built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom to make their sons and daughters pass through the fire to Molech—something I never commanded them, nor had it ever entered My mind, that they should commit such an abomination and cause Judah to sin.

Behold, I am going to give the command, declares the LORD, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it, capture it, and burn it down. And I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

“We do not drink wine,” they replied, “for our forefather Jonadab son of Rechab commanded us, ‘Neither you nor your descendants are ever to drink wine.

And we have obeyed the voice of our forefather Jonadab son of Rechab in all he commanded us. So we have not drunk wine all our lives—neither we nor our wives nor our sons and daughters.

But we have lived in tents and have obeyed and done exactly as our forefather Jonadab commanded us.

The words of Jonadab son of Rechab have been carried out. He commanded his sons not to drink wine, and they have not drunk it to this very day because they have obeyed the command of their forefather. But I have spoken to you again and again, and you have not obeyed Me!

Yes, the sons of Jonadab son of Rechab carried out the command their forefather gave them, but these people have not listened to Me.

Then Jeremiah said to the house of the Rechabites: “This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Because you have obeyed the command of your forefather Jonadab and have kept all his commandments and have done all that he charged you to do,

Then Jeremiah commanded Baruch, “I am restricted; I cannot enter the house of the LORD;

So Baruch son of Neriah did everything that Jeremiah the prophet had commanded him. In the house of the LORD he read the words of the LORD from the scroll.

Instead, the king commanded Jerahmeel, a son of the king, as well as Seraiah son of Azriel and Shelemiah son of Abdeel, to seize Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But the LORD had hidden them.

So King Zedekiah gave orders for Jeremiah to be placed in the courtyard of the guard and given a loaf of bread daily from the street of the bakers, until all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.

So the king commanded Ebed-melech the Cushite, “Take thirty men from here with you and pull Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.”

When all the officials came to Jeremiah and questioned him, he relayed to them the exact words the king had commanded him to say. So they said no more to him, for no one had overheard the conversation.

Now Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had given orders about Jeremiah through Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, saying,

How can it rest when the LORD has commanded it? He has appointed it against Ashkelon and the shore of its coastland.”

Go up against the land of Merathaim, and against the residents of Pekod. Kill them and devote them to destruction. Do all that I have commanded you,” declares the LORD.

This is the message that Jeremiah the prophet gave to the quartermaster Seraiah son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went to Babylon with King Zedekiah of Judah in the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign.

The adversary has seized all her treasures. For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary—those You had forbidden to enter Your assembly.

Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. The LORD has decreed against Jacob that his neighbors become his foes. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes.

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it?

Then the man clothed in linen with the writing kit at his side reported back, “I have done as You commanded.”

When the LORD commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, “Take fire from within the wheelwork, from among the cherubim,” the man went in and stood beside a wheel.

So I did as I was commanded. I brought out my bags for exile by day, and in the evening I dug through the wall by hand. I took my belongings out at dusk, carrying them on my shoulder as they watched.

So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And the next morning I did as I had been commanded.

So I prophesied as I had been commanded. And as I prophesied, there was suddenly a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to bone.

So I prophesied as He had commanded me, and the breath entered them, and they came to life and stood on their feet—a vast army.

“But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.

For the LORD gives a command: “The great house will be smashed to pieces, and the small house to rubble.”

Though they hide themselves atop Carmel, there I will track them and seize them; and though they hide from Me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them.

Though they are driven by their enemies into captivity, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix My eyes upon them for harm and not for good.”

“For surely I will give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations as grain is sifted in a sieve; but not a pebble will reach the ground.

The LORD has issued a command concerning you, O Nineveh: “There will be no descendants to carry on your name. I will cut off the carved image and cast idol from the house of your gods; I will prepare your grave, for you are contemptible.”

But did not My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, overtake your fathers? They repented and said, ‘Just as the LORD of Hosts purposed to do to us according to our ways and deeds, so He has done to us.’”

“Remember the law of My servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances I commanded him for all Israel at Horeb.