1. This is the message that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah. It came in the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah and the first year Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon.
2. This is the message Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and Jerusalem:
3. The Lord has spoken his word to me again and again for these past twenty-three years. I have been a prophet since the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah. I have spoken messages from the Lord to you from that time until today, but you have not listened.
4. The Lord has sent all his servants the prophets to you over and over again, but you have not listened or paid any attention to them.
5. Those prophets have said, “Stop your evil ways. Stop doing what is wrong so you can stay in the land that the Lord gave to you and your ancestors to live in forever.
6. Don’t follow other gods to serve them or to worship them. Don’t make me, the Lord, angry by worshiping idols that are the work of your own hands, or I will punish you.”
7. “But you people of Judah did not listen to me,” says the Lord. “You made me angry by worshiping idols that were the work of your own hands, so I punished you.”
8. So this is what the Lord All-Powerful says: “Since you have not listened to my messages,