3 Then the Lord said to me, “Jeremiah, what do you see?”I answered, “Figs. The good ones are very good, and the bad ones are very bad, too bad to eat.”
4 So the Lord said to me,
5 “I, the Lord, the God of Israel, consider that the people who were taken away to Babylonia are like these good figs, and I will treat them with kindness.
6 I will watch over them and bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not pull them up.
7 I will give them the desire to know that I am the Lord. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God, because they will return to me with all their heart.
8 “As for King Zedekiah of Judah, the politicians round him, and the rest of the people of Jerusalem who have stayed in this land or moved to Egypt — I, the Lord, will treat them all like these figs that are too bad to be eaten.
9 I will bring such a disaster on them that all the nations of the world will be terrified. People will mock them, make jokes about them, ridicule them, and use their name as a curse everywhere I scatter them.