This haftarah opens with King Zedekiah making a covenant with the people of Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege to release their Hebrew slaves, a measure carried out publicly and solemnly, every slaveholder freeing the men and women who had served them, in apparent fulfillment of an ancient law requiring such release after a set term of service.
The relief the siege had briefly granted then leads the same slaveholders to change their minds and force the freed men and women back into servitude, a reversal Jeremiah condemns sharply, recalling that God had made a covenant with their ancestors specifically requiring release of Hebrew slaves after six years of service, a covenant this generation had briefly honored under pressure only to break it again once the immediate danger seemed to ease.
The haftarah closes with a shorter, separate passage affirming that just as the fixed laws of heaven and earth, day and night, cannot be broken, God will not reject the descendants of Jacob and David, closing a prophecy of judgment for broken faith with a reassurance that God's own faithfulness remains unbroken regardless.
Zedekiah's brief compliance under the pressure of the siege, followed by reversal once the pressure eased, gives this haftarah an unusually candid portrait of a whole community rediscovering an old law only under duress, a caution the tradition reads as relevant well beyond the specific historical siege it describes.