Jeremiah 24

1. The LORD showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of the LORD (after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had exiled Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the rulers of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon);

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

3. Then the LORD said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs; the good figs are very good, and the bad are very bad, so that they cannot be eaten, 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 I will acknowledge the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

6. For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land. And I will build them and not pull them down; 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. For they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

8. And like the bad figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad,’ surely thus says the LORD, ‘so I will deliver up Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his rulers, and the rest of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt;

9. And I will even make them a horror for evil to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I shall drive them.

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