The actual verse
Jeremiah 29:11 (BSB):
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
The KJV (1769):
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
The verse is verbatim in BSB in this rendering. The KJV uses older vocabulary (“thoughts” for “plans”, “expected end” for “future and hope”), but the underlying Hebrew is the same.
How the verse circulates
Jeremiah 29:11 is among the most-quoted individual verses in English-language usage — on graduation cards, social-media posts, and inspirational merchandise — and it is the most-quoted verse from the book of Jeremiah by a wide margin. It is almost always cited alone, without the preceding verse. The wording in circulation is generally accurate; the BSB, NIV, ESV, NLT, NASB, and CSB all render the verse comparably, so the differences between the standalone citation and the chapter lie in the surrounding text rather than in translation.
The surrounding passage
The verse appears within Jeremiah 29:1–14, a letter sent by the prophet Jeremiah from Jerusalem to the Israelite exiles in Babylon. The full immediate context (Jeremiah 29:10–14, BSB):
10 For this is what the LORD says: “When seventy years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise concerning you to restore you to this place.
11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
14 I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore you from captivity and gather you from all the nations and places to which I have banished you, declares the LORD, and will restore you to the place from which I have sent you into exile.”
The “plans” of verse 11 are framed within the seventy-year timeframe of verse 10, and verses 12–14 describe them as restoration from captivity and return to the land.
The wider letter
Jeremiah 29 opens by identifying the sender and the recipients (29:1): the letter was sent by the prophet Jeremiah from Jerusalem “to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the other people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” The historical setting is the first Babylonian deportation of 597 BC, in which Nebuchadnezzar removed King Jehoiachin, the royal household, officials, and craftsmen from Jerusalem (recorded in 2 Kings 24:10–17). Jerusalem itself was destroyed about a decade later, in 586 BC; the letter falls between these two dates.
The letter instructs the exiles to settle in Babylon for the long term (29:5–7): build houses, plant gardens, marry, arrange marriages for their children, and seek the welfare of the city of their captivity —
Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you too will prosper. (Jeremiah 29:7, BSB)
Verses 8–9 then warn the exiles against prophets and diviners promising otherwise: “they are prophesying to you a lie in My name; I have not sent them.” The preceding chapter records one such prophecy — in Jeremiah 28, the prophet Hananiah publicly declared that Babylon’s yoke would be broken within two years. It is in this larger context — a community in exile, instructed to settle in and warned against expecting a quick return — that the promise of verse 11 is delivered.
The seventy years
Verse 10 conditions the promise of restoration on the completion of “seventy years for Babylon.” On the chapter’s own timeline, most of the adults who received the letter would not live to see the restoration; the return described in verses 10–14 belonged to a later generation, born in exile. Historically, the period from the destruction of Jerusalem (586 BC) to Cyrus’s decree permitting return (538 BC) is under fifty years; counted from the first Babylonian incursion and deportation of 605 BC, the period is close to seventy. Scholars differ on whether the figure is a precise count or a conventional round number; the text itself gives the number without elaboration.
Addressed in the plural
The “you” addressed in the verse is grammatically plural in Hebrew — the phrase “I have for you” uses the preposition לָכֶם (lachem), “for you (plural)” — and the whole letter addresses the exile community collectively. English, which uses “you” for both singular and plural, does not show this distinction.
Original language
Three Hebrew terms in the verse have wider semantic ranges than the standard English glosses:
- machashavot (מַחֲשָׁבוֹת, “plans/thoughts/designs”) — the BSB renders “plans”; the KJV “thoughts.” Either is within range. HALOT glosses the singular machashabah as “thought, plan, purpose, device,” from the verb chashab (to think, plan, reckon). The same noun is used elsewhere of human scheming (Genesis 6:5) and of divine intention (Isaiah 55:8); context, not the vocabulary, indicates whose plans and of what kind.
- shalom (שָׁלוֹם, “peace/wholeness/welfare/prosperity”) — the BSB renders “to prosper you”; the KJV “of peace.” The Hebrew word covers both senses. See Shalom — the word behind “prosper”.
- acharit ve-tikvah (אַחֲרִית וְתִקְוָה, literally “future and hope”) — the BSB renders “hope and a future”; the KJV “an expected end.” The noun tikvah (hope) derives from a root associated with a cord or line stretched out.
Later readings
Readers and traditions have long differed on how a promise addressed to ancient Israel relates to later readers. Some read Jeremiah 29:11 as fulfilled in the return from Babylon under Cyrus’s decree (Ezra 1), with later applications made by analogy; some read it as anticipating a fuller future restoration; some devotional traditions apply it directly to the individual reader. This entry does not adjudicate among these readings; it documents the verse’s wording and its original setting.
The chapter can be compared in other translations at BibleGateway: Jeremiah 29 — NIV →, ESV →, NLT →.