A date stamped into the vision itself. Verse 1 does something few of Jeremiah's visions do: it dates itself precisely, by naming the event it comes after — Jeconiah king of Judah's deportation to Babylon in 597 BC (already profiled at 22:24), along with the princes, and “the craftsmen and the smiths.” That last pair is not decoration: 2 Kings 24:14-16 lists the same skilled class among the first deportees, a targeted removal of the people who could re-arm a rebellion — smiths make weapons, and the group's absence is itself a political fact, not just a demographic one.

The two baskets are set (mu'adim) before the temple — the same root that gives mo'ed, an appointed time or place. The text never explains why fig baskets specifically, or who set them there; the vision starts from something as plain as produce at a market stall, which is exactly what makes its interpretation, four verses later, land as a shock.

The repetition is the point, not padding. V2 describes the figs in God's own voice — very good, very bad, so bad they cannot be eaten — and v3 has Jeremiah repeat the description back almost word for word before God ever says what it means. Hebrew narrative repeats deliberately; this translation keeps the repetition rather than trimming it for variety.

⚠ The reversal is the whole sermon. Every instinct says the ones still standing in Jerusalem, still in the land God promised, are the fortunate ones, and the deportees are the casualties. This chapter says the opposite: the already-exiled community — gone, stripped, marched to Babylon — are the good figs, and staying put is not itself a mercy.

Two different verbs for “know/regard,” four verses apart, doing two different jobs. V5's “so I will regard” (akkir, from nakar) is a verb of formal recognition — the same root that names a stranger (nokri) when used in its other direction, and that gives Ruth's “who took notice of you” (Ruth 2:19) in its favorable one. KJV keeps the root-echo closest with “so will I acknowledge them”; ASV has “so will I regard”; NIV and NWT both unpack it as “regard . . . as good” / “regard in a good way.” V7's “a heart to know me” is a different root entirely (yada) — not recognition but relationship, the same word Genesis uses for a man “knowing” his wife.

Echo paid: the prophet's own commissioning verbs, turned positive. V6's “I will build them and not tear down; I will plant them and not uproot” reuses, almost word for word, two of the six verbs Jeremiah was given at his own call — “to uproot and to tear down . . . to build and to plant” (1:10). There the six verbs were a mandate laid on a young prophet over “nations and kingdoms.” Here God applies exactly two of the destructive/constructive pairs to the deportees themselves, in the first person, positively — the commission finally shown doing what it was for.

Echo paid early: this is the New Covenant's own formula, said first in miniature. “They will be my people, and I will be their God” and “a heart to know me” both reappear, expanded, in the New Covenant oracle already on these pages — “I will be their God, and they will be my people” (31:32, Hebrew numbering) and “they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (31:33). Whichever chapter was written first, the book files them so that this chapter's private promise to one deported generation and chapter 31's promise to the whole house of Israel read as the same covenant, stated twice at two different sizes.

The bad figs get named, not just described. Zedekiah (whose own name gets played on at 23:6), his princes, “the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land,” and — the first mention on these pages of a community that becomes a whole storyline later in the book — those already living in Egypt. The list nearly duplicates the one already delivered to the same king by name: “Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and those left in this city” (21:7), and v10's sword, famine, and pestilence is the identical triad already run through that chapter twice (21:9) — the same sentence, filed a second time under a different heading.

A real, five-way shelf split on one word. V9's lezva'ah gets translated at least three distinct ways: KJV reads the clause as physical relocation — “I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms”; ASV keeps a sense of motion, “to be tossed to and fro”; NIV and NWT both go psychological, “an object of horror.” The Spanish shelf splits the same way: RV60 reads “por escarnio” (mockery), NVI “motivo de espanto” (fright). This translation follows the majority psychological sense, “horror,” without pretending the other readings are wrong — the Hebrew root covers trembling, horror, and being made to wander, and different versions have leaned on different parts of that same root's range.

⚠ A ketiv/qere sits inside that same word. The Masoretic consonants as written give an unusual, defective spelling; the vowels supplied read it as the ordinary form of the same root. This translation follows the read form, as it does wherever the two tracks diverge — there is no separate word hiding in the written form here, only a scribal spelling the tradition itself flagged and corrected.