Jeremiah 50:29-40. Happy New Years to anyone who might be reading along as I write this. Although my goal is for this to be a daily reading blog you can see from the gaps in the dating that it hasn’t worked out that way so far. These posts were originally started to help my Jr. High students with reading their Bibles. Our church had encouraged a reading through the Bible plan but many expressed confusion over what they were reading and gave up. That reading plan was much more ambitious, 2 years. My wife thinks that this one, at 5 years, seems like a lot too. I hope the posts aren’t too long for any of you who might be reading. I do my best to keep them short but still want to explain the passage. Remember you can make register and leave posts by hitting the more button at the end of the days reading and scrolling to the bottom of the new page. I hope to do a better job of writing this year each day, it’s a pretty big job. Remember though if you are new to the blog there are plenty of books already covered. I hope this encourages you to stay in touch with God through his love letter to you. May your relationship with Him be deepened by your effort.

We are currently near the end of the book of Jeremiah (remember that there are lots of extra facts in the “Did You Know” section of this site). Jeremiah was a prophet or messenger for Yahweh (the personal name of the one true God) in the closing days of Judah (the southern kingdom or half of the nation of Israel). The northern kingdom, also called Israel, had been scattered about 100 years earlier by the then powerful Assyrian Empire. In the days of Jeremiah (he served God from 627 BC through the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BC and beyond with certain refugees who took him to Egypt where he died) Judah was taken captive by the new power in the region, Babylon. Although Jeremiah was a Jew and most of his messages were to the Jewish people in and around Jerusalem he was appointed as a prophet “to the nations” by God (Jeremiah 1:5). Earlier in the book he actually delivered messages to several representatives of foreign powers who had com to Jerusalem to plot against the Babylonians (Jeremiah 27:1-11). Here at the end of the book there have been several messages addressed to several different nations about their future. In Jeremiah 27:7 Jeremiah told those nations that they should not resist Nebuchadnezzar (the king of Babylon) since God was making him the ruler of them “until the time of his own land comes”. That is a hint that Babylon would one day cease to be a world power. Here at the end of Jeremiah we find a major message directly to Babylon detailing its end. The message to Babylon began in Jeremiah 50:1 and continues through Jeremiah 51:64. The fist part of the message encouraged the Jewish refugees living in Babylon to take advantage of the opportunity that would come to return to the land God had promised them. The next part (the previous reading) detailed the destruction of Babylon and made it clear that it was partially because they did not honor Yahweh as the one true God.

Today’s reading continues the description of the destruction of the Babylonian Empire. In verses 29-32 God calls another nation to war against Babylon. In verse 29 we see it will be many and that there will be no escape. In yesterday’s reading I described the eventual downfall of the Babylonian Empire and how it might fit the description we see here. It is interesting that verse 29 we are told that what happens to Babylon is repayment for her actions. Since Babylon was used by God to bring punishment on the people of Judah for their own disobedience and disrespect toward God you might wonder why Babylon is going to be punished. Although God used and allowed the actions of Babylon that does not mean that he dictated all of them. Sometimes I think God is like a master chess player, the other player(s) (mankind) make their moves but God always has another move that carries game forward bring it closer to the only possible end when you are playing against the all powerful creator of the universe, He wins. But because of his love for each person His win can by our win too, if we each turn our life over to Him. That is why repeatedly in Jeremiah and the other prophets we see God encouraging us to repent (turn back to God). Verse 29 tells us that Babylon was arrogant (the Hebrew word translated “arrogant” can mean “to boil”. The idea is acting like you are more than you really are, proud is another good translation of the word) and that there arrogance was against Yahweh. Babylon wasn’t going to be punished for ding what God wanted but for all of the things they did that God didn’t want them doing. Verses 31-32 continue to make it clear that Babylon will be removed from the scene of power because of her arrogance.

In an earlier post I talked about the way some of the visions of the prophets worked, how they often saw history compressed. Sometimes we can see exact timing in what the prophets wrote (like Daniel 9) and sometimes we just see the big picture or the main events over a period of time. Remember the words in Jeremiah 27:7 the reign of Babylon would last at least through the lifetime of Nebuchadnezzar, his son and his grand-son (which is how it played out in history). Today’s reading might sound like the overthrow of Babylon would happen soon but it wouldn’t be until about 539 BC that Babylon would fall to the new Persian Empire and even then the city of Babylon wouldn’t be destroyed, that happened much later. Although God did work in the lives of the people taken captive and brought some of them back to the land of Judah there is a bigger picture going on here, in fact if you read “The Old Testament Connection” you will see that there is always a bigger picture when it comes to the Israelite people. The bigger picture is all mankind and our broken relationship with God. In verse 33 we see the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah mentioned as two different groups. In this verse the sons of Israel must be the people of the northern kingdom scattered through out the Assyrian Empire. The sons of Judah would have been the refugees from Judah living in Babylon (and maybe even the ones who defected to Egypt, though they were told that most of them would never return to the land). So this section would have been an encouragement to the Jews in exile in Babylon but it also hints at bigger things later in history.

Verse 34 also hints at this bigger picture when it talks about rest to the whole earth. In Jeremiah 3:17 we were told that one day the nations would honor Yahweh in Jerusalem. The Jewish people were waiting for a promised one (Messiah), a coming king from the family of David who would give them a forever kingdom in the land. It would be a kingdom ruled by Yahweh one of peace and rest and according to Jeremiah and other Old Testament prophets it would involve people from every nation (Isaiah 2:2, Zechariah 2:11). In the New Testament the word for a “chosen one” is “christoi” usually translated “Christ”. Jesus is that chosen one to be king of the whole earth. The Jewish people of Jesus day struggled with whether or not he was the Christ or Messiah because they were focused on the kingdom as a place and were missing the fact that a kingdom involves people. In the Old Testament the messiah is also described as a suffering servant (Isaiah 53) and here in Jeremiah 50:34 he is called a “redeemer”. The Hebrew word translated as “redeemer” is “goel”. A “goel” was a relative who would do what ever it took to preserve the life and name of one of his relatives. In verse 34 we are told that this “redeemer” of Israel and Judah is strong. He is actually identified as Yahweh (LORD) himself and he will argue our case for us. In Hebrews 4:14-15 we are told that Jesus is our great high priest (a person who would represent the people before God) and that he is “like us”. In Hebrews 7:25 we are told that Jesus can give life (a fixed relationship with God) to those who turn to God through him, that verse tells us that he lives to “intercede” for us. That is the same kind of idea as “arguing our case” in Jeremiah 50:34. In Hebrews 4 there is also the idea of Jesus given rest to those who trust in him and in Hebrews 7 we are told that his life is indestructible (that is because he is both God and man, Yahweh in a permanent human body). Yet in one way his life was destroyed when God the Father (also Yahweh, see “Three or One?”) turned his back on Jesus when he died on the cross (Matthew 27:46, forsake is a word that means “abandon or leave behind”). That short time when Jesus and God the father were separated (dead to each other) was enough to pay the price of separation (Romans 6:23) that each of us owes. His indestructible life was briefly ‘destroyed” so that our “destructible” lives could have a new relationship with God forever (1 Corinthians 15 see especially verse 53). 1 John 2:2 tells us that Jesus died for the sins of everyone (the whole world) as we have seen in Jeremiah God wants to forgive but we must return to him. Jesus sacrifice is enough for all but unfortunately his gift will be left uncollected and unopened by many.

Verse 34 ends with a return to the current situation.   Israel and Judah would be given rest but Babylon would not. Verses 35-40 are sometimes called the “Song of the Sword”. The word sword (Hebrew “chereb”) is used 5 times (maybe 6) in these 6 verses. In verse 35 we are told that the “sword” is against the “Chaldeans” and the “inhabitants of Babylon”. In Jeremiah “Chaldean” and “Babylonian” are used as substitutes for each other. Actually Chaldeans were inhabitants of an area east of Babylon and south near the upper end of the Persian Gulf in what is today western Iran. Babylon is a city that was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (“Neo” means “new”, there had been a Babylonian Empire centuries before). Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Babylonian Empire was a Chaldean. We see the sword destroying different parts of the Empire: Against the Chaldeans, the inhabitants of the city (or empire), and against the wise men and other leaders in verse 35, a sword against the false religious leaders and soldiers in verse 36, a sword against their military machinery and hired soldiers (“foreigners” translates a word that means “mixed in” and is probably referring to hired soldiers who were mixed in to the army), and finally (sort of) a sword against the wealth and treasure of Babylon. Verse 38 probably contains a sixth “sword”. The word translated drought in verse 38 is the Hebrew word “choreb” which means “heat, dry, drought, or waste” (like waste land). Remembrer the word for “sword” in Hebrew is “chereb”. “Choreb” is actually a form of “chereb” and “chereb” comes from a root word that means “waste or destroy”. The connection of all three words is destruction, swords destroy and so do droughts. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Written Hebrew from that time didn’t have vowels. When Jeremiah (or Baruch, his assistant) wrote there wouldn’t have been any vowels and the words in verses 35-38 would have all been the same. Later on when the books were translated into other languages translators had to decide which word was meant. One very old Greek translation, the Septuagint, actually uses the Greek word for sword not drought (this would have been the translation used by many in Jesus’ day). “Sword” matches all of the other words in verses 35-37 but a drought seems to be what would dry up water not a sword. The interesting thing is how Babylon was conquered. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BC. His son, Abel-marduk (Evil-merodach, Jeremiah 52:31), ruled for two years. Abel was murdered by his brother-in-law Nergal-sharezer who died in 556 BC. The brother-in-law’s son, Labashi-marduk (I think this would have been a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, remember Jeremiah 27:7) took over but was immediately assassinated by a group of insiders including Nabonidus who took over the Empire. Nabonidus ruled from 556 to 539 BC. During this time The Persians to the east were gaining power. Nabonidus seemed to prefer a different “god” than most people of his empire and eventually he moved to the town of Tema in the western part of his empire east of the northern end of the Red Sea. From there he shared rule of the empire with his son Belshazzar. In Daniel 5 we read the story of the conquest of Babylon. The town was under siege by the Persians. Belshazzar wasn’t worried because Babylon was heavily fortified. Also it had a good source of water (a critical resource during a siege) because the Euprhates River under the wall and through the city. Unknown to Belshazzar the Persian army was working to divert the flow of the Euphrates to a near by lake. On October 12, 539 BC the river was diverted and The Persian army entered and took control of the city. The people of Babylon had not been happy with Nabonidus (probably because of his different religious views) and did not resist the invasion. Belshazzar was captured and executed and the Babylonian Empire was taken over by Cyrus the king of Persia. He placed Darius in control of much of the newly taken territory. If we understand “sword” as a metaphor for an army then the waters of the Babylon truly were dried up by a sword and not a drought.

The most important part of today’s reading in Jeremiah I think is in verse 38 when we are told that all of this happened because they were a “land of idols”. In verse 39 we see the complete destruction of this once great empire. Unlike some of the other nations who would get a second chance (Egypt, Jeremiah 46:26; Moab, Jeremiah 48:47; Ammon, Jeremiah 49:6; Elam, Jeremiah 49:38-39) Babylon would become like Sodom and Gomorrah a perpetual wilderness. Babylon is probably the same place as Babel in Genesis 11. It is important to understand that this place had a long history of pride and self-reliance. From the beginning they thought that they could build their way up to Heaven. Here in Jeremiah we have seen that their pride and arrogance toward God was what caused their destruction. Though it came slowly and many years after Nebuchadnezzar was king and even after Cyrus was long gone, the destruction came. God is real and the real God is named Yahweh. His story is told to us in the Bible because he loves us and wants us to know. He wants us to know that he made us to have a relationship with him. We violated that relationship by being disobedient and disrespectful toward him. Though we all deserve to be cut off from him forever his love for us motivated him to have a plan to fix our relationship with him. That plan included him becoming one of us and then suffering death in our place. That is who Jesus is and what he has done. Our part is to give up living our own way and accepting God love, mercy, and forgiveness. We need to let him come into our lives and help us honor him instead of disobey him. We need to turn to him ad accept his help. Babylon clearly never was on that path and the end of the road for them was complete destruction. We each have a choice turn to God or be cut off from him for all eternity. I hope you will choose the savior rather than the “sword”.

God thank you for your love. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for letting me come back to you. Help me honor you with my life each day. Thank you too for your love letter (and warning), the Bible. Help me understand it, live it, and share it with other. Let me help your kingdom grow life by life.