Jeremiah Chapter 42    

¹Then all the leaders of the forces, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and Jezaniah the son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least even to the greatest, came near
  ²and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Please let our supplication be presented before you, and pray to Yahweh your God, for us, for all this remnant—for we are left but a few out of many, as your eyes now see us—
  ³pray that Yahweh your God may show us the way in which we should walk, and the thing that we should do.”
 

⁴Then Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you; behold, I will pray to Yahweh your God according to your words, and whatever thing Yahweh answers you, I will tell it to you. I will keep nothing back from you.”
 

⁵Then they said to Jeremiah, “May Yahweh be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not do according to all the word with which Yahweh your God sends us through you.
  ⁶Whether it is good or whether it is evil, we will obey the voice of Yahweh our God to whom we are sending you, so that it may go well with us when we obey the voice of Yahweh our God.”
 

⁷And it came to pass after ten days that the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah.
  ⁸Then he called Johanan the son of Kareah and all the leaders of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least to the greatest,
  ⁹and he said to them, “This is what Yahweh the God of Israel says, to whom you sent me to present your supplication before him:
  ¹⁰if you will remain in this land, then will I build you up and not pull you down, and I will plant you and not pluck you up; for I am grieved about the evil that I have done to you.
  ¹¹Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon of whom you are afraid. Do not be afraid of him, says Yahweh, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand.
  ¹²I will grant you mercy, so that he will have mercy on you and cause you to return to your own land.
  ¹³But if you say, ‘We will not remain in this land,’ so that you do not obey the voice of Yahweh your God,
  ¹⁴saying, ‘No, but we will go to the land of Egypt, where we will not see war, nor hear the sound of the shofar, nor have hunger of bread, and there we will live,’
  ¹⁵then hear the word of Yahweh, O remnant of Judah. This is what Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: If you indeed set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to live there,
  ¹⁶then it will come to pass that the sword that you fear will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine that you are afraid of will follow close behind you there in Egypt, and you will die there.
  ¹⁷This is how it will be for all the people who set their faces to go into Egypt to live there: they will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, and none of them will remain or escape from the evil that I will bring on them.
 

¹⁸For this is what Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says: As my anger and my wrath has been poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you enter Egypt; and you will be an object of horror, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach, and you will see this place no more.
  ¹⁹Yahweh has spoken concerning you, O remnant of Judah: ‘Do not go into Egypt!’ Know for a certainty that I have warned you this day.
  ²⁰For you have deceived yourselves at the cost of your own lives, for you yourselves sent me to Yahweh your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to Yahweh our God, and according to all that Yahweh our God will say, tell us that and we will do it,’
  ²¹and this day I have told it to you. But you have not obeyed the voice of Yahweh your God in anything that he has sent me to tell you.
  ²²So now, know, yes, know that you will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the plague in the place where you want to go to live there.”