¹⁸ “The decision is right; for back in the days when Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of King Hezekiah of Judah, he told the people that God said: ‘This hill shall be plowed like an open field and this city of Jerusalem razed into heaps of stone, and a forest shall grow at the top where the great Temple now stands!’ ¹⁹ But did King Hezekiah and the people kill him for saying this? No, they turned from their wickedness and worshiped the Lord and begged the Lord to have mercy upon them; and the Lord held back the terrible punishment he had pronounced against them. If we kill Jeremiah for giving us the messages of God, who knows what God will do to us!”

²⁰ Another true prophet of the Lord, Uriah (son of Shemaiah) from Kiriath-jearim, was also denouncing the city and the nation at the same time as Jeremiah was.