9. For they are prophesying falsely to you in my name; I have not sent them,’ declares Yahweh.
10. For thus says Yahweh, ‘As soon as the time has passed, seventy years for Babylon, I will attend to you, and I will fulfill my good word to you, to bring you back to this place.
11. For I know the plans that I am planning concerning you,’ declares Yahweh, ‘plans for prosperity and not for harm, to give to you a future and a hope.
12. Then when you call me, and you come and pray to me, then I will listen to you.
13. When you search for me, then you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart.
14. And I will let myself be found by you,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and I will restore your fortunes, and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places to which I have driven you,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from which I deported you.’
15. Because you have said, ‘Yahweh has raised up prophets for us in Babylon’—
16. for thus says Yahweh concerning the king who sits on the throne of David and concerning all the people who live in this city, your fellow kinsmen who did not go with you into the exile—
17. thus says Yahweh of hosts, ‘Look, I am going to send among them the sword, the famine, and the plague, and I will make them like rotten figs that cannot be eaten because of their bad quality.
18. And I will pursue them with the sword, with the famine, and with the plague, and I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a curse, and a horror, and an object of hissing, and a disgrace among all the nations to which I have driven them,
19. because they did not listen to my words,’ declares Yahweh, ‘when I sent to them my servants the prophets, sending over and over again, and they would not listen,’ declares Yahweh.
20. And you, hear the word of Yahweh, all you exiles whom I sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.
21. Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning Ahab, the son of Kolaiah, and concerning Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying to you in my name a lie, ‘Look, I am going to give them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and he will strike them before your eyes.
22. And a curse will be taken up because of them by all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylon, saying, “May Yahweh make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire,”
23. because they have done a disgraceful thing in Israel, and they have committed adultery with the wives of their neighbors, and they have spoken words in my name, lies that I have not commanded them, and I am he who knows, and I am a witness,’ declares Yahweh.”
24. And to Shemaiah the Nehelamite you shall say, saying,
25. “Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, ‘Because you yourself sent a letter in your name to all the people who are in Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah, the priest, and to all the priests, saying,
26. “Yahweh made you priest instead of Jehoiada the priest, so that there are overseers in the house of Yahweh over any mad man who exhibits the behavior of a prophet, and you must put him into the stocks and into the neck iron,