19. Then King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Judeans who have deserted to the Babylonians. The Babylonians might hand me over to them and they will torture me.”
20. Then Jeremiah answered, “You will not be handed over to them. Please obey the Lord by doing what I have been telling you. Then all will go well with you and your life will be spared.
21. But if you refuse to surrender, the Lord has shown me a vision of what will happen. Here is what I saw:
22. All the women who are left in the royal palace of Judah will be led out to the officers of the king of Babylon. They will taunt you saying,‘Your trusted friends misled you; they have gotten the best of you.Now that your feet are stuck in the mud,they have turned their backs on you.’
23. “All your wives and your children will be turned over to the Babylonians. You yourself will not escape from them but will be captured by the king of Babylon. This city will be burned down.”
24. Then Zedekiah told Jeremiah, “Do not let anyone know about the conversation we have had. If you do, you will die.
25. The officials may hear that I have talked with you. They may come to you and say, ‘Tell us what you said to the king and what the king said to you. Do not hide anything from us. If you do, we will kill you.’
26. If they do this, tell them, ‘I was pleading with the king not to send me back to die in the dungeon of Jonathan’s house.’”
27. All the officials did indeed come and question Jeremiah. He told them exactly what the king had instructed him to say. They stopped questioning him any further because no one had actually heard their conversation.
28. So Jeremiah remained confined in the courtyard of the guardhouse until the day Jerusalem was captured.The following events occurred when Jerusalem was captured.