- Years later, King Zedekiah and his officials also ignore the words of Jeremiah.
- But at the same time, Zedekiah sends a guy named Jehucal and the priest Zephaniah to go ask Jeremiah to pray for them.
- (Jeremiah hadn't yet been put in prison.)
- Also, the Babylonians have just retreated from Jerusalem because they heard that the army of the Egyptians is coming for them, so what's up with that?
- Jeremiah tells the two men not to kid themselves—the Egyptian army will return home, and the Babylonians will take over Jerusalem and burn it. This would happen even if the Babylonians only had wounded soldiers left in their tents. It's fated.
- With the Babylonians temporarily out of the picture, Jeremiah goes to the land of Benjamin to try to claim some property.
- But a guard named Irijah arrests him at the Benjamin gate, claiming that Jeremiah was going to surrender to the Babylonians.
- Jeremiah protests his innocence, but Irijah has him taken to the officials who beat him and imprison him in the secretary Jonathan's house.
- He sits around in the prison for days and days.
- When Zedekiah asks Jeremiah if there's any message for him, Jeremiah replies that Zedekiah will be captured by the king of Babylon.
- Jeremiah then asks why Zedekiah threw him in prison, since he's the only prophet who predicted this disaster. He pleads with the king not to send him back to the secretary's house to die in prison.
- Instead, the king holds him in a better part of the prison compound where he gets a loaf of bread every day, until all the bread in the city runs out.