Jeremiah 29:15-32. In today’s reading we start off with the rest the letter that Jeremiah sent to the exiles in Babylon. We started reading what God had to say to them yesterday. If you haven’t read that post you should go back and read it first. Yesterday’s reading ended with God telling the exiles that, if they really truly wanted him back in their lives that he would be there for them. We already have seen that their exile was part of his plan. God is always active in our world and affecting the lives we live, but if we want to have a serious personal relationship with him we need to be “all in” with him. God also confirmed that he had not forgotten all of his promises to the Jewish people about their future and their land. But for a while the people in exile needed to accept it as part of God’s plan and settle down where they were. The needed to be close to him not necessarily close to Jerusalem.
In verse 15 God moves to the issue of the “prophets” that were with the exiles. Remember the false prophets back in Jerusalem were challenging Jeremiah’s messages. They were so wrapped up in the “where”, Jerusalem and the Temple”, that they couldn’t even hear God and were confusing their own word, idea, and dreams with words from God. The “prophets” in Babylon were in the same boat; it was all about getting back to Jerusalem and the Temple (Jeremiah 29:8-10). In verse 16 God brings up the people back home; the “lucky” ones, and says, “Let me tell you about these guys…”. In verses 17-19 we find out that the people back in Jerusalem were going to suffer further invasions. Along with the invasions would come famine, death, and disease. Eventually the people back in Jerusalem would leave Judah and wind up elsewhere. We know from later in the book of Jeremiah (and from history) that a lot of them ran away to Egypt.
It is interesting that God uses the plural for where they are scattered (“nations”), from what we know the people in Judah basically all went to Egypt, one nation. It is of course possible that a few went elsewhere and that is why it says “nations” in verse 18, but this could also be a case where Jeremiah is talking about his day but the prediction also applies to the future. Back in verse 14 when God is telling the exiles that he will one day take them back to Jerusalem he also says “nations” even though they were all together in Babylon (and basically stayed that way for the whole 70 years). At the end of the 70 years a new king conquered the Babylonian Empire and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and Judea. So God’s promise was fulfilled to the people of Jeremiah’s day. We know from history, though, that that didn’t last forever. Judah was ruled by three more nations between then and the time of Jesus. In 70 AD Jerusalem and the new Temple (we’ll get to that) were destroyed by the Roman army. At that time the Jewish people were scattered and wound up all over the world. In the last 100 or so years they have been returning to the land. Many believe that this return is setting the stage for the final and ultimate fulfillment of the promise of a forever kingdom with a descendant of David on the throne. God may have been hinting at this by using plural nouns in this passage.
In verses 15-16 we learned that what was going to happen in Jerusalem was supposed to be a lesson to the exiles. We also see that idea in verse 17 when Jeremiah brings up the rotten fig idea again. Remember in Jeremiah 24 the two baskets of figs. The exiles were the good figs and the people left home the bad figs. The idea was that the exiles were the ones where God wanted them and the people left behind were the ones who were not really where God wanted them. In verse 18 we learn that the whole world was also going to learn from the people in Judah. The people left behind would become a sort of warning about the power and purity or jealousness of Yahweh. In verse 19 we see that what happened to the people left behind was directly related to their disobedience to God.
The end of verse 19 and verse 20 have two interesting facts in them. First we are reminded that the people had been warned over and over again. God works hard to keep us out of trouble but we always seem to find it when we are controlling our own lives. The second thing we don’t want to miss is the very last part of verse 19, “but you did not listen”. God brings the message full circle to the exile who are reading this letter. Remember, back in verse 15, when God brought up the people left behind that he was doing it because the people in exile were sort of envious and wanting to return right away, even though God decided they needed to be in Babylon for 70 years. Here in vv. 19-20 he reminds them that the people left behind are not where he wants them and they will suffer for that, so the exiles better listen and learn.
Back in Jerusalem, Jeremiah was being challenged by false prophets, in chapter 28 we saw what happened to one of them in particular, Hananiah. He made some very specific predictions that contradicted what God had told Jeremiah. God made an example out of him by predicting his death within a year and them following through 2 months later. In verse 21-23 we have a similar story about two false prophets in Babylon. Not only were they saying that the captivity would end quickly they were disobedient in other ways as well. God chose to use them as an example and predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would execute them. We don’t have any confirmation that they were, but the track record of Jeremiah and the other true prophets in the Old Testament makes me certain that they were. I like the end of verse 23 when Yahweh says, “I am the one who sees and knows, I am the witness.”
Verse 24 shifts to another letter Jeremiah is to send, this one to another false prophet in Babylon, Shemaiah. In verse 25 God starts the letter by identifying himself as Yahweh (LORD, the one true God). Through Jeremiah, God is responding to a letter that Shemaiah had sent to one of the leading priests back in Jerusalem; a letter he was to share with the other priests and the people back home. We also learn from verse 25 that the letter contained Shemaiah’s own personal words. That is a contrast to the fact that the “word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah”.
In verse 26-28 we learn what the letter from Shemaiah said. In the letter he tells Zephaniah (not the Zephaniah who is one of the minor prophets) the leading priest that Yahweh has put him in charge there in Jerusalem and that part of his job is to chain up any wild and crazy prophets that are there. In verse 27 Shemaiah wants to know why Zephaniah hasn’t locked up Jeremiah. In verse 28 he lists his complaint against Jeremiah. He didn’t like it that Jeremiah had sent a letter to the exiles telling them to settle down and that Yahweh was going to keep them in Babylon a long time. In verse 29 we see that Zephaniah showed the letter to Jeremiah. Zephaniah was probably a faithful priest because he didn’t lock Jeremiah up like the letter asked.
In verses 30-32 we see Jeremiah’s response to the letter from Shemaiah. Actually it’s God’s response since we are told “the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah”, again the contrast with the source of Shemaiah’s message. You want to notice that Jeremiah (or really God) didn’t answer Shemaiah he sent a letter back to the people in exile. In that letter God makes it very clear that Shemaiah wasn’t speaking for him and also that Shemaiah’s message was a lie. Yomight want to notice that the people were believing Shemaiah’s lies, too. In verse 32 God informs the people that Shemaiah will die because of misleading the people and even worse his family line will end with him. God also makes it clear that contradicting what he has said is considered rebellion. One bright point in the whole response to the exiles is that God is planning to do some good for the Jewish people. This promise, at least in the near future, would be for the exiles in Babylon. Remember from yesterday that the Jewish people who had remained in Jerusalem would eventually be scattered among “nations”. We see that it will be soon since God says he is about to do this good thing and that it would be something that Shemaiah would miss out on. When the Jewish people returned at the end of the 70 years of captivity there were some alive who had lived in Jerusalem before the captivity and remembered the old Temple.
I think it is important to notice that false prophets, wherever they are, are subject to God’s discipline. Hananiah in Jerusalem and Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah in Babylon all suffered death because contradicted God and were misleading the people. God loves people and he wants our relationship with him fixed, he has been working out the details of that for thousands of years now. But people will perish for eternity, because they reject Jesus, God’s “fix”. In this story we see that God is very serious about his message getting to the people. It is also important to note that the first three guys all died because they were saying that God told them something that he didn’t, but the last guy died for using his own ideas to contradict God. We need to be careful about contradicting God , ever.
God help my words be true to you and your plan. Help them be words that bring spiritual renewal; eternal life; a forever relationship with you into peoples lives. Let me be a true and faithful spokesperson for you. Thank you for a hope and a future. Let me help other have the same.