Jeremiah 26:13Easy To Read VersionYou people change your lives! You must start doing good things! You must obey the Lord your God. If you do that, then the Lord will change his mind. The Lord will not do the bad things he told you about. See the chapter |
I am talking about the Agreement I made with your ancestors. {\cf2\super [88]} I made that Agreement with them at the time I brought them out of Egypt. \{Egypt was a place of many troubles—\}it was like an oven hot enough to melt iron. I told those people: Obey me and do everything I command you. If you do this, you will be my people, and I will be your God.
“Hezekiah was the king of Judah. And Hezekiah didn’t kill Micah. None of the people of Judah killed Micah. You know that Hezekiah respected the Lord. He wanted to please the Lord. The Lord had said he would do bad things to Judah. But Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, and the Lord changed his mind. The Lord didn’t do those bad things. If we hurt Jeremiah, then we will bring many troubles on ourselves. And those troubles will be our own fault.”
I sent my servants the prophets to you people of Israel and Judah. I sent them to you again and again. Those prophets said to you, ‘Each of you people of Israel and Judah must stop doing evil things. You must be good. Don’t follow other gods. Don’t worship or serve them. If you obey me, then you will live in the land I have given to you and your ancestors.’ But you people have not paid attention to my message.
“You must say to them, ‘The Lord my Master says: On my life, I promise, I don’t enjoy seeing people die—not even evil people! I don’t want them to die. I want those evil people to come back to me. I want them to change their lives so they can really live! So come back to me! Stop doing bad things! Why must you die, family of Israel?’
Jonah complained to the Lord and said, “I knew this would happen! I was in my own country, and you told me to come here. At that time, I knew that you would forgive the people of this evil city. So I decided to run away to Tarshish. I knew that you are a kind God! I knew that you show mercy and don’t want to punish people! I knew that you are full of kindness! I knew that if these people stopped sinning, you would change your plans to destroy them.
Many times the enemies of Israel did bad things to the people. So the people of Israel would cry for help. And each time, the Lord felt sorry for the people. Each time he sent a judge to save the people from their enemies. The Lord was always with those judges. So each time, the people of Israel were saved from their enemies.