Jeremiah 29:11-18

Here’s what YAHWEH says to you: “I know all about the marvelous destiny I have in store for you, a future planned out in detail. My intention is not to harm you but to surround you with peace and prosperity and to give you a beautiful future, glistening with hope. When you call on me and come to me in prayer, I will listen to your every word. If you reach out to me, you will find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will not disappoint you,” declares YAHWEH. “All that you have lost, I will restore, and I will regather you from all the nations where I have scattered you. I will bring you back home to the land from which I exiled you,” declares YAHWEH. YAHWEH says all these things to you because you claim that he has raised up prophets for you in Babylon. This is what YAHWEH says about David’s descendant, King Zedekiah, and all the people living in this city, your relatives who were not taken away as prisoners with you: YAHWEH, Commander of Angel Armies, says: “I am now going to send catastrophe to them—war, food shortages, and plague. I will make them like worthless figs, so rotten they cannot be eaten. I will make them into a horrible sight to all the earth, a curse, a thing of horror, scorn, and derision to all the nations where I have driven them. I will afflict them with war, food shortages, and plague