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Old Testament Reading - The price of witness to truth

¹²Then Jeremiah spoke in his defense. “The Lord sent me,” he said, “to prophesy against this Temple and this city. He gave me every word of all that I have spoken. ¹³But if you stop your sinning and begin obeying the Lord your God, he will cancel all the punishment he has announced against you. ¹⁴As for me, I am helpless and in your power—do with me as you think best. ¹⁵But there is one thing sure, if you kill me, you will be killing an innocent man, and the responsibility will lie upon you and upon this city and upon every person living in it; for it is absolutely true that the Lord sent me to speak every word that you have heard from me.”

¹⁶Then the officials and people said to the priests and false prophets, “This man does not deserve the death sentence, for he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.”

¹⁷Then some of the wise old men stood and spoke to all the people standing around and said:

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!’ ¹⁹But 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!”