אֵת

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore you from captivity and gather you from all the nations and places to which I have banished you, declares the LORD. I will restore you to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

…this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “I will send against them sword and famine and plague, and I will make them like rotten figs, so bad they cannot be eaten.

I will do this because they have not listened to My words, declares the LORD, which I sent to them again and again through My servants the prophets. And neither have you exiles listened, declares the LORD.”

This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says about Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying to you lies in My name: “I will deliver them to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will kill them before your very eyes.

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.”

‘The LORD has appointed you priest in place of Jehoiada, to be the chief officer in the house of the LORD, responsible for any madman who acts like a prophet—you must put him in stocks and neck irons.

For he has sent to us in Babylon, claiming: Since the exile will be lengthy, build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat their produce.’”

(Zephaniah the priest, however, had read this letter to Jeremiah the prophet.)

“Send a message telling all the exiles what the LORD says concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite. Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you—though I did not send him—and has made you trust in a lie,

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you.

For behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will restore from captivity My people Israel and Judah, declares the LORD. I will restore them to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they will possess it.’”

Instead, they will serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

As for you, O Jacob My servant, do not be afraid, declares the LORD, and do not be dismayed, O Israel. For I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their captivity! Jacob will return to quiet and ease, with no one to make him afraid.

For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”

All your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer seek you, for I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins.

Their leader will be one of their own, and their ruler will arise from their midst. And I will bring him near, and he will approach Me, for who would dare on his own to approach Me?” declares the LORD.

For this is what the LORD says: “Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations! Make your praises heard, and say, ‘O LORD, save Your people, the remnant of Israel!’

Behold, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, including the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor. They will return as a great assembly!

For the LORD has ransomed Jacob and redeemed him from the hand that had overpowered him.

I will fill the souls of the priests abundantly, and will fill My people with My goodness,” declares the LORD.

This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “When I restore them from captivity, they will once again speak this word in the land of Judah and in its cities: ‘May the LORD bless you, O righteous dwelling place, O holy mountain.’

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and of beast.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.

“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.

No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”

For Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him, saying: “Why are you prophesying like this? You claim that the LORD says, ‘Behold, I am about to deliver this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it.

Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape from the hands of the Chaldeans, but he will surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and will speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye.

He will take Zedekiah to Babylon, where he will stay until I attend to him, declares the LORD. If you fight against the Chaldeans, you will not succeed.’”

Behold! Hanamel, the son of your uncle Shallum, is coming to you to say, ‘Buy for yourself my field in Anathoth, for you have the right of redemption to buy it.’

Then, as the LORD had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and urged me, ‘Please buy my field in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for you own the right of inheritance and redemption. Buy it for yourself.’” Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD.

So I bought the field in Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and I weighed out seventeen shekels of silver.

Then I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy with its terms and conditions, as well as the open copy—