Jeremiah 24

Revised Geneva Translation

24 The LORD showed me. And behold, two baskets of figs were set before the Temple of the LORD, after Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, had carried away captive Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah with the workmen, and cunning men of Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babel.

² One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first. And the other basket had very bad figs which could not be eaten, they were so evil.

³ Then said the LORD to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs, the good figs very good and the bad very bad which cannot be eaten, they are so evil.”

⁴ Again, the Word of the LORD came to me, saying,

⁵ “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I know those of Judah who are carried away captive to be good, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans.

⁶ ‘For I will set My Eyes upon them for good. And I will bring them back to this land. And I will build them and not destroy them. And I will plant them and not root them out.

⁷ ‘And I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God. For they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

⁸ ‘And as the bad figs which cannot be eaten, they are so evil — surely thus says the LORD — so will I give Zedekiah, the king of Judah, and his princes, and the rest of Jerusalem that remains in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt.

⁹ ‘I will give them as a terrible plague to all the kingdoms of the Earth, for a reproach and for a proverb, for a common talk and for a curse, in all places where I shall cast them.

¹⁰ ‘And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, until they are destroyed in the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.’”