1THIS is what the LORD showed me: I saw two baskets of figs set out in front of the temple of the LORD. This was after King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon had deported from Jerusalem Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with the officers of Judah, the craftsmen, and the smiths, and taken them to Babylon.
2In one basket the figs were very good, like those that are first ripe; in the other the figs were very bad, so bad that they were not fit to eat.
3The LORD said to me, “What are you looking at, Jeremiah?” “Figs,” I answered, “the good very good, and the bad so bad that they are not fit to eat.”
4Then this word came to me from the LORD:
5These are the words of the LORD the God of Israel: I count the exiles of Judah whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldaeans as good as these good figs.
6I shall look to their welfare, and restore them to this land; I shall build them up and not pull them down, plant them and not uproot them.
7I shall give them the wit to know me, for I am the LORD; they will be my people and I shall be their God, for they will come back to me wholeheartedly.
8But King Zedekiah of Judah, his officers, and the survivors of Jerusalem, both those who remain in this land and those who have settled in Egypt -- all these I shall treat as bad figs, says the LORD, so bad that they are not fit to eat.
9I shall make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach, a byword, an object of taunting and cursing wherever I banish them.
10I shall send sword, famine, and pestilence against them until they have vanished from the land which I gave to them and to their forefathers.