17. If you choose to obey the king of Babylonia, you will live. But if you listen to those prophets, this whole city will be nothing but a pile of rubble.
18. If I really had spoken to those prophets, they would know what I am going to do. Then they would be begging me not to let everything else be taken from the temple and the king's palace and the rest of Jerusalem.
19-21. After all, when Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin to Babylonia as a prisoner, he didn't take everything of value from Jerusalem. He left the bronze pillars, the huge bronze bowl called the Sea, and the moveable bronze stands in the temple, and he left a lot of other valuable things in the palace and in the rest of Jerusalem.But now I, the Lord All-Powerful, the God of Israel, say that all these things
22. will be taken to Babylonia, where they will remain until I decide to bring them back to Jerusalem. I, the Lord, have spoken.