13. You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart.
14. Yes, I say, you will find me, and I will restore you to your land. I will gather you from every country and from every place to which I have scattered you, and I will bring you back to the land from which I had sent you away into exile. I, the Lord, have spoken.’
15. “You say that the Lord has given you prophets in Babylonia.
16. Listen to what the Lord says about the king who rules the kingdom that David ruled and about the people of this city, that is, your relatives who were not taken away as prisoners with you.
17. The Lord Almighty says, ‘I am bringing war, starvation, and disease on them, and I will make them like figs that are too rotten to be eaten.
18. I will pursue them with war, starvation, and disease, and all the nations of the world will be horrified at what they see. Everywhere I scatter them, people will be shocked and terrified at what has happened to them. People will mock them and use their name as a curse.
19. This will happen to them because they did not obey the message that I kept on sending to them through my servants the prophets. They refused to listen.
20. All of you whom I sent into exile in Babylonia, listen to what I, the Lord, say.’
21. “The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, has spoken about Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who are telling you lies in his name. He has said that he will hand them over to the power of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, who will put them to death before your eyes.
22. When the people who were taken away as prisoners from Jerusalem to Babylonia want to bring a curse on someone, they will say, ‘May the Lord treat you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylonia roasted alive!’
23. This will be their fate because they are guilty of terrible sins — they have committed adultery and have told lies in the Lord's name. This was against the Lord's will; he knows what they have done, and he is a witness against them. The Lord has spoken.”
24-25. The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, gave me a message for Shemaiah of Nehelam, who had sent a letter in his own name to all the people of Jerusalem and to the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah and to all the other priests. In this letter, Shemaiah wrote to Zephaniah:
26. “The Lord made you a priest in place of Jehoiada, and you are now the chief officer in the Temple. It is your duty to see that every madman who pretends to be a prophet is placed in chains with an iron collar round his neck.