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¹ AFTER Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with the craftsmen and the soldiers, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon, the LORD showed me, and, behold two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the LORD.² One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs, so that they could not be eaten, because they were so bad.³ Then the LORD said to me, What do you see, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the bad figs, very bad, so that they cannot be eaten because they are so bad.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 acknowledge the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place to the land of the Chaldeans for their good.⁶ For I will set my eyes upon them for good and not for evil, says the LORD, and I will bring them again to this land; and I will build them and not overthrow them; and I will plant them and not pluck them up.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 when they shall return to me with their whole heart.⁸ And like the bad figs which cannot be eaten because they are so bad; thus says the LORD, So will I deliver Zedekiah the king of Judah and his princes and the remnant of the people who are left in this city together with those who dwell in the land of Egypt;⁹ And I will make them a horror, an abomination and an evil thing, a reproach in all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a proverb, a taunt, and a curse in all the lands where I have driven them.¹⁰ And I will send after them the sword, famine, and pestilence, till I shall destroy them off the land which I gave to them and to their fathers.