It was in that same year, in the fifth month of Zedekiah’s fourth year as king of Judah, soon after he began to rule. The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, from the town of Gibeon, spoke to me in the Temple of the Lord in front of the priests and all the people. He said:
So this is what the Lord says: ‘Soon I will remove you from the earth. You will die this year, because you taught the people to turn against the Lord.’ ”
This is the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the elders who were among the captives, the priests, and the prophets. He sent it to all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had taken as captives from Jerusalem to Babylon.
I commanded my words and laws to my servants the prophets, and they preached to your ancestors, who returned to me. They said, ‘The Lord All-Powerful did as he said he would. He punished us for the way we lived and for what we did.’ ”
But if a prophet says something I did not tell him to say as though he were speaking for me, or if a prophet speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must be killed.”
