Deeper Commentary
Jeremiah 29:1 Now these are the words of the
letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the residue of the
elders of the captivity, and to the priests, to the prophets, and to all
the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to
Babylon- This prophecy is in line with that of the good and bad figs
of Jer. 24. The good figs were to be those who had first gone into
captivity, who were to repent and then return; the bad figs referred to
Zedekiah and his courtiers, and he is referred to as this in :17. But as
noted on Jer. 24, that prophecy had only potential fulfillment and did not
come true as potentially possible. That must be remembered in interpreting
what follows here.
Jeremiah 29:2 (after that Jeconiah the king, the queen mother, the
eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths
had departed from Jerusalem)- These craftsmen may have been deported
because they had helped build defences against the Babylonians. But the
words are also used for the formers of idols; perhaps they were taken away
so that those who remained would have less chance of committing idolatry
and would repent.
Jeremiah 29:3 by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the
son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), saying- Zedekiah was Babylon's
puppet king and so there was regular sending of messengers between the two
cities.
Jeremiah 29:4 Thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, to all the
captivity, whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem to
Babylon- The reminder was that the carrying into captivity had been
done by God; the Babylonians were His servants, their armies controlled by
Yahweh of armies. They were to realize this, and serve Babylon as if
serving Yahweh.
Jeremiah 29:5 Build houses and dwell in them; and plant gardens and eat
their fruit- This was a direct quotation from Is. 65:21 and Am. 9:14
about the situation in the Kingdom of God. Whilst waiting for the
restoration of that Kingdom, they were to live the kingdom life as far as
possible in exile; just as we are to live the life of the Kingdom, the
eternal life, in this life. See on Jer. 30:18.
Jeremiah 29:6 Take wives, and father sons and daughters; and take wives
for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear
sons and daughters; and multiply there, and don’t be diminished- This
would be stating the obvious unless we understand it as meaning that the
Jews were being encouraged to intermarry with the people of Babylon. This
was a special dispensation for a special occasion; because as noted on :7,
the Divine intention was that Babylon should repent, and along with
repentant Judah become part of a restored Kingdom of God on earth based in
Zion.
Jeremiah 29:7 Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be
carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its peace you
shall have peace- "Peace" is often peace with God. Babylon could have
repented; see on :6 and Jer. 51:8,9. Jer. 33:6; 43:12 can be read as
meaning that it was God's intention that Babylon too should find peace
with Him; Babylon's peace was to be that of Judah. From Zion, peace
would be spoken to the Gentiles (Zech. 9:10). They were to pray for
"peace" upon Babylon in the sense of peace with God; but either they
didn't pray for this, returning to their nationalism and racial elitism;
or Babylon didn't want it. Hence the predictions of the destruction of
Babylon in later Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 29:8 For thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel: Don’t let
your prophets who are in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you;
neither listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed- The
prophets were "in the midst" of Jerusalem, in Zion itself. The common
people caused the false prophets to dream their dreams; the expectations
and hopes of the masses were perceived by the false prophets, and they
perhaps genuinely dreamed what the people wanted; but those dreams were
not of God but just the usual outcome of subconscious psychological forces
in the Freudian sense.
Jeremiah 29:9 For they prophesy falsely to you in My name: I have not sent
them, says Yahweh- As explained on :8, it is one thing to have a
dream, as the normal outcome of unconscious psychological forces; but it
is quite another to falsely claim that this is from God. It is a playing
God in the worst way.
Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says Yahweh, After seventy years are accomplished
for Babylon, I will visit you and perform My word of grace towards you, in
causing you to return to this place- The 70 year period of Jer.
25:11,12 didn't come true exactly.
The 70 years of Babylon's mastery and Judah's
captivity were not strictly fulfilled to the letter. See on :32 and Jer. 27:7;
31:22.
That period was to involve the
surrounding nations being subject to Babylon for that period.
So the 70 years of Babylon's mastery and Judah's
captivity were not strictly fulfilled to the letter. From the fall of
Nineveh (612) to the fall of Babylon (539) was 73 years; or from
Nebuchadnezzar's accession (605) to Babylon's fall (539) was 66 years
(Dates taken from John Bright, Jeremiah (New York: Doubleday, 1965)
p. 209). Was there a degree to which the period was prolonged or
decreased, due to unstated variables- perhaps prayer, Judah's repentance,
Babylon's repentance...?
Baruch 6:2 is perhaps the most serious example of
misquoting and willfully misunderstanding God’s word. Here, Baruch [as
Jeremiah’s scribe] changes the prophecy of Jer. 29:10, that Israel were to
be 70 years in Babylon and then return: “When you reach Babylon you will
be there many years, a period seven generations long, after which I will
bring you back”. The 70 years are turned into seven generations. This was
precisely the mindset spoken against in Haggai 1:2, whereby the Jews
reasoned that the time had not yet come to rebuild the temple. “The time”
referred to the time spoken of by Jeremiah- but Baruch had re-interpreted
the 70 years as meaning seven generations. And yet all this was done with
a surface-level reverence for God’s word- the exiles considered themselves
blessed because they had God’s law (Baruch 4:4). Indeed, much of Baruch is
a condemnation of idols and a demand to worship Yahweh.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says
Yahweh, thoughts of peace, and not of evil-
The
same words are found in Jer. 18:8; God will indeed think evil towards His
people if they do not repent; but He says now that He thinks not evil but
peace. This could be a reflection of His desperate hope and assumption
that they would repent; or it could simply be that the pole of His desire
for peace with men is finally stronger than His legitimate need to bring
the evil of judgment upon them.
To give you hope and a future- God gave Judah in captivity “hope in your latter end” (RV)- a hope of restoration at the end of the 70 years. Yet they preferred the Babylon life, and rejected this hope. “Ye shall seek me…and I will be found of you” (Jer. 29:14) then becomes a conditional statement- then, if they sought the Lord, they would have been found of Him.
Stand and watch a stream of people passing along a busy street. The eager young woman, the tired, worried business man, the young father, the old, sick man, the middle aged woman with the blank eyes... the greatest tragedy to me is not so much death, that one day relatively soon these faces will all be face down or face up in the dust of death, but rather... the tragedy is surely that they are living life without purpose. But for us, we recognize that God has a plan for us- and that plan is positive, to do us good and not harm in our latter end. Nothing is insignificant in our lives. Even the smallest incidents have significance for our character development. No meeting with anyone is a chance; we have the power of eternal life in our clumsy hands, through knowing the Gospel of life. Whoever we meet we are surely intended to meet, and extend the hope of life to them. Having a sense of purpose simplifies life. There are less choices; we don’t over-extend ourselves trying to do too much, with all the stress and conflict which this results in. It is meaningless work rather than overwork that wears us down and robs us of our joy.
Jeremiah 29:12 You shall call on Me, and you shall go and pray to Me, and
I will listen to you- As explained on :11, God is assuming Israel's
repentance. Here we have His fantasy, if you like, of God for Israel. They
would call upon Him and want to "go and pray to Me", in Jerusalem; and He
would confirm that desire by miraculously returning them to Zion. But they
didn't repent. And yet He still caused Cyrus to give the decree
encouraging them to return- such was His desire to as it were force
through His saving purpose with His people. That most of them didn't
respond even to that is terrible, just as it is today.
Jeremiah 29:13 You shall seek Me and find Me, when you shall search for Me
with all your heart- Repentance and seeking God
are related; thus Israel's restoration came when they were seeking
God and (i.e.) repented (Jer. 29:12-14). However, there is good reason to
think that Israel at this time were still spiritually weak; some of them
had a desire to seek righteousness, and God accepted this. The
connection between repentance and seeking God means that to withdraw
fellowship from someone for not repenting enough, is to disfellowship them
for not seeking God enough. The implication is that the rest of us have
sought God enough- and therefore found Him. This is pure
self-righteousness. In conclusion, God wants us to be seeking
Him, but this seeking God does not imply complete
repentance and forsaking of sin.
The LXX suggests that the praying and seeking was perhaps a condition of fulfillment: “And do ye pray to me, and I will hearken...and do ye earnestly seek me, and ye shall find me”. But the next verses go on to say that because they had false prophets in Babylon, the wrath of God was against them all, and even those in the land would suffer because of them. And further (29:23-26), they committed adultery and vied for leadership amongst themselves. Judah did return, but evidently they didn’t seek Yahweh with all their hearts beforehand. And thus they were not fully found of Him, and He did not therefore fully turn away their captivity. Indeed, by choosing to remain in Babylon, they themselves disallowed this turning away of their captivity.
Jeremiah 29:14 I will be found by you, says Yahweh, and I will turn again
your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all
the places where I have driven you, says Yahweh; and I will bring you
again to the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive-
As explained on :11,12, God is assuming Israel's repentance. Here we
have His fantasy, if you like, of God for Israel. They would call upon Him
and want to "go and pray to Me", in Jerusalem (:12); and He would confirm
that desire by miraculously returning them to Zion.
God
gave Judah in captivity “hope in your latter end” (:11 RV)- a hope
of restoration at the end of the 70 years. Yet they preferred the Babylon
life, and rejected this hope. “Ye shall seek me…and I will be found of
you” (Jer. 29:14) then becomes a conditional statement- then, if
they sought the Lord, they would have been found of Him.
Jeremiah 29:15 Because you have said, Yahweh has raised us up prophets in
Babylon- Just as the faith of others can lead to forgiveness and
salvation of third parties in some cases (see on Mk. 2:5), so the opposite
can be the case. Because the exiles in Babylon chose to believe their
false prophets and disbelieve Ezekiel who was there with them, therefore
the "bad figs" would indeed be bad figs; those left in Judah were to
receive judgment. Whereas in the Divine economy, those "bad figs" could
have been saved by the repentance of the exiles who were already in
Babylon. A lot depended upon that group, as Ezekiel often reminds them.
See on :22.
Jeremiah 29:16 thus says Yahweh concerning the king who sits on the throne
of David, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your
brothers who haven’t gone forth with you into captivity- As explained
on :15, although these men were evil, God was prepared to avert or
ameliorate their judgment for the sake of the spirituality and repentance
of the exiles already in Babylon.
Jeremiah 29:17 thus says Yahweh of Armies; Behold, I will send on them the
sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs,
that can’t be eaten, they are so bad- See on :1. As explained on :15,
the "vile figs" were indeed "vile", but their judgment could have been
averted or ameliorated for the sake of the spirituality and repentance of
the exiles already in Babylon.
Jeremiah 29:18 I will pursue after them with the sword, with the famine,
and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be tossed back and forth
among all the kingdoms of the earth, to be an object of horror, and an
astonishment- This removing / tossing to and from of Judah from
their land uses the same word as in Dt. 28:25; in response to their
breaking of the covenant, they would be "removed (s.w.) into all the
kingdoms of the eretz, throughout the land promised to Abraham.
But this curse could have been turned into a blessing; for the restoration
prophets envisaged the nations of the eretz repenting and
converting to Yahweh. This could have been achieved by the exiles
witnessing to the various peoples and languages within the Babylonian /
Persian empire. But this didn't happen as was potentially possible. The
exiles didn't repent, and so their repentance and experience of the grace
of forgiveness was not the powerful pattern of conversion to their
neighbours which it could have been.
Jeremiah 29:19 because they have not listened to My words, says Yahweh,
with which I sent to them My servants the prophets, rising up early and
sending them; but you would not hear, says Yahweh- Those left in
Jerusalem were indeed "vile figs" and had refused the prophetic word of
Jeremiah and other true prophets. But they could have been forgiven for
that for the sake of the repentance of the exiles in Babylon. Likewise the
paralyzed man of Mk. 2:5 had his sins forgiven for the sake of the
friends. Just as happened when Job prayed for his friends.
Jeremiah 29:20 Hear therefore the word of Yahweh, all you of the
captivity, whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon- As noted
on :1, this prophecy is addressing the same two groups as in Jer. 24; the
captives were intended to repent and become the good figs, whereas
Zedekiah and his courtiers who remained in Jerusalem would become the bad
figs (Jer. 29:17). But that prophecy was only potentially true. Because now
in Jer. 29:21-32 Jeremiah warns the exiles, those who were supposed to
become good figs, that they were tolerating false prophets and following
them.
Jeremiah 29:21 Thus says Yahweh of Armies the God of Israel, concerning
Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and concerning Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who
prophesy a lie to you in My name: Behold, I will deliver them into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he shall kill them before your
eyes- The "lie" was that of the serpent, "you will not really die",
you have not sinned and will not sin, it is Yahweh who is being
unreasonable with you... These false prophets were presumably targeted by
Nebuchadnezzar because they predicted his overthrow and the restoration of
the Jewish kingdom. But that was precisely the message of Jeremiah; but he
was treated well by the Babylonians, because he saw these things as
dependent upon Jewish servitude to Nebuchadnezzar, who he presented as a
servant of Yahweh.
Jeremiah 29:22 and of them shall be taken up a curse by all the captives
of Judah who are in Babylon saying, Yahweh make you like Zedekiah and like
Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire- Again we see the
fickleness of God's people when they act en masse. They eagerly
believed these men (:15), and then cursed them when they were burnt to
death in the fiery furnace. Daniel's faithful friends had been saved out
of that same furnace; perhaps they had blasphemously claimed to be equal
to them, and certain of preservation likewise.
Jeremiah 29:23 because they have worked folly in Israel, and have
committed adultery with their neighbours’ wives, and have spoken words in
My name falsely, which I didn’t command them; and I am He who knows, and
am witness, says Yahweh- The uninspired apocryphal book of Susanna
claims that two false prophets who were her neighbours tried to rape her
in a park in Babylon, but she resisted them. She complained of their
behaviour, but they falsely accused her and she was condemned to death- to
be saved by the intervention of Daniel the prophet, who had the two
rapists condemned to death. Whether this is true or not can never be
known, but it would slot in at this point with the inspired account. And
again we see that false teaching is nearly always associated with
immorality, often in the sexual sense- rather than being a genuine
intellectual misunderstanding.
Jeremiah 29:24 Concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite you shall speak saying-
"Nehelamite" is literally a dreamer, a false prophet.
Jeremiah 29:25 Thus speaks Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, saying,
Because you have sent letters in your own name to all the people who are
at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, and to all
the priests saying- He wrote probably in the name of God; but God
knew that he wrote only in his own name. Just as the prophets had their
own dreams, but played God by claiming they were speaking in God's Name.
This confusion between our name and God's Name is just as tempting today;
e.g. the pastor who claims he has had a word from the Lord which requires
his congregation to buy him an expensive luxury item.
Jeremiah 29:26 Yahweh has made you priest in the place of Jehoiada the
priest, that there may be officers in the house of Yahweh, for every man
who is mad, and makes himself a prophet, that you should put him in the
stocks and in shackles- If Zephaniah son of Maaseiah (:25) was the
brother of the false prophet in Babylon, Zedekiah son of Maaseiah (:21),
then the political intrigue and nepotism is clear. This was of men and not
God. The supposed command from Yahweh to put false prophets who were mad
into the stocks runs quite contrary to the spirit of the law of Moses.
Death was the punishment for false prophets, not public mockery. And
mental instability was never a cause for punishment under Yahweh's law;
that is the stuff of pure paganism. We note that both the Lord and Paul
were likewise accused of madness, just as we too are viewed as "crazy" and
"fools" by secular society.
Jeremiah 29:27 Now therefore, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of
Anathoth, who makes himself a prophet to you- Jeremiah accused the
false prophets likewise of making themselves prophets. Clearly one side
was right and the other wrong. The whole thing was set up like this so
that the spiritually minded would intuitively perceive where the truth
was.
Jeremiah 29:28 because he has sent to us in Babylon, saying, The captivity
is long: build houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat their
fruit?- By implication, the message therefore of the false prophets
was that the captivity would be short, and perhaps instead of submitting
to Babylon as a sign of their repentance and settling in there, the false
prophets were teaching rebellion against Babylon.
Jeremiah 29:29 Zephaniah the priest read this letter in the ears of
Jeremiah the prophet- This was all in public, at the temple, in some
kind of public trial.
Jeremiah 29:30 Then came the word of Yahweh to Jeremiah, saying- This
was presumably at the same time as the public trial (:29). Or maybe
Jeremiah walked away with nothing more to say, leaving the people to
perceive intuitively where truth lay. And then Yahweh spoke.
Jeremiah 29:31 Send to all them of the captivity saying, Thus says Yahweh
concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite: Because Shemaiah has prophesied to
you, and I didn’t send him, and he has caused you to trust in a lie-
Causing to trust in a lie was the essence of the sin in Eden; the events
there are the prototype of all subsequent human failure. The accusation
that they had willingly trusted in lies is found throughout Jeremiah (s.w.
Jer. 7:4,8; 13:25; 28:15). The people willingly believed his lies, because
it was a message they were predisposed to accept. This is why false
teaching is listened to. It is a question of moral rather than
intellectual failure.
Jeremiah 29:32 therefore thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will punish Shemaiah
the Nehelamite and his seed; he shall not have a man to dwell among this
people, neither shall he see the good that I will do to My people, says
Yahweh, because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh- The
implication is that that generation would "see the good that I will do to
My people"; but Shemaiah would die prematurely and would not see it. This
is further evidence that the idea of 70 years captivity was not the only
possible prophetic scenario at the time; see on :10.
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