The Father Shows Jeremiah Two Baskets of Figs
Two baskets of figs sit before the temple. The good ones are the exiles already carried to Babylon — those our Father will plant again and give a heart to know him. The bad ones are Zedekiah and those still in Jerusalem who thought they had escaped.
24 1Our Father showed me two baskets of figs placed before our Father's temple—after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon exiled Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with Judah's officials, craftsmen, and metalworkers, from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2One basket had very good figs, ripe early; the other had figs too bad to eat.
3Then our Father asked me, "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "Figs," I said, "the good very good, the bad too bad to eat."
4Then the word of our Father came to me:
5"This is what our Father of Israel says: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles of Judah I sent from here to the land of the Babylonians.
6"I'll fix my eyes on them for good, bring them back to this land; build them, not tear down, plant them, not uproot. 7I will give them a heart to know me as Father; they will be my children, I their Father, for they will return to me wholeheartedly.'
8"But like bad figs, too rotten to eat—our Father says—so I will make Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials, and Jerusalem's remnant, left here or in Egypt.
9"I will make them a horror, disaster, disgrace, object of ridicule, mockery, and curse to all kingdoms on earth, wherever I drive them. 10I will send sword, famine, plague against them until they vanish from the land I gave them and their ancestors."
