Chapter 29
This chapter begins the 14th and final message:
1 These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. [Jer 29:1 ESV]
Another unique message, in how it was delivered, and to whom it was sent.
Looks like this may be stepping back in time from the last chapter. MSB says this letter was sent in 597 BC. He does not say how he knows this. It says the message was sent after Jeconiah and company were taken away into exile. So we may know from Kings or Chronicles exactly when this was. He would have taken Daniel at that first blush I believe also.
The message tells the exiles to treat the place God has sent them as their home. He tells them to live life to the full. Not to be on hold, or to wait for the return to Judah. They are to prosper and increase, not mark time and decrease. God says to treat their new cities well, because as those cities prosper, the people will prosper. A good lesson for us when we find ourselves in unplanned, unloved, seemingly disastrous circumstances. God is there too! Good for FB if it can be shortened enough.
Then vs 10 tells them they'll be there for 70 years. So I guess the count starts at the first taking away into exile.
I never knew the context of this verse. This was in Jeremiah's message from God to the exiles. God's words to them:
11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. [Jer 29:11-13 ESV].
2023 - Vs 11 has a very specific application - to the Jews in exile, as addressed in a letter from Jeremiah sent directly to them. It was a promise to those exiles. Yet we appropriate it, we take it for our own and we act as if God owes fulfilment of this prophecy from Jeremiah to ANYONE who will call upon him and pray to him. This is not so. This is specific, not general. It is misrepresented over and over. What to commands we ought to do, but to think of it as a promise to us is, in my opinion, a misinterpretation.
2023 - Not only that, but beginning in vs 13 I believe it is the Millennial, and the return of Israel from all over the world that is in view, NOT just the return from Babylon. In 70 years they do return, but these other things did not happen after that. Their fortunes were not restored to what they were in the days of David and Solomon. Not anywhere near it. They come home in 70 years only to be driven away again in 70 AD, and banished from the land entirely in 136 AD. And while Israel was restored in 1948, they are a secular nation, and Jews remain scattered all over the planet. In the 70th week, which the end of this prophecy envisions, THEN thy will come home, and know the LORD and understand that the Messiah came long before.
2021 - Another oft-quoted verse, and always completely out of context. This verse is not a general principle. This verse is specific to the exiles in Babylon in 6th century BC. It was those people for whom God's plans were good. It doesn't say good things will happen IF you pray, it says good things will happen and THEN you will pray. This one, and 2Chr7:14 have to be the most out of context verses we ever hear. All you have to do is read it to realize that it is specific to that time, and those people.
2025 - In vss 10-14 God is telling the exiles to make the best of things, to live their best life while they are captive, and to pray for their captors because as God blesses the captors, so the exiles will be blessed. Here is the interesting part...God is the one who sent them there in the first place and he sent them there to punish them for abandoning him. But almost as soon as they get there, God tells them it is just temporary, that He will see that they have a fairly pleasant life under the circumstances, that he will hear their prayers there and he will take them home in 70 years.
Think about grounding your teenager. After they've been ground for three days don't you want to start reassuring them that it's only four more days and things will go back to just the way they were? Do you feel guilty about trying to remove the sting of the punishment? Here in Jeremiah, God does the same thing. It is God in us that makes us want to restore those who being punished, because we love them dearly. Justice must be served sometimes, but no one loves punishing their own children.
Here is proof that God loves us through our sins.
2021 - 17 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten. [Jer 29:17 ESV]. This phrase - "sword, famine, and pestilence", has appeared many times already in Jeremiah. This is the pronouncement, every time, on those who do not submit to the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar. Though sword is always mentioned first, when we actually have details, we see that famine and pestilence always do their devastating work before the soldiers even show up. God weakens the "defenders", who should have surrendered, and then makes them easy for the invaders to conquer. I wonder if this is only the case when the invader is favored by God, and the defenders are in defiance of His will or if this is also what happens in Godly discipline against a nation? Did Samaria experience these three things also before Assyria finally crushed them? They were never advised to submit to Assyria in exchange for their lives as Israel was. We do know that God tried to correct them, though. Did He use the same means? Would be a good study.
2023 - Nothing here about the beasts attacking also. I really need to do that search.
vs 14 says God will bring them back. Likely a near and far prophecy. 70 years near. The Millennial far. MSB confirms.
2024 - I don't know why we think this is near and far when it is clearly specifically near. He has just said 70 years. This is the prophecy of the first return from exile, after the first punishment of the Double Punishment. I agree, completely, that there will be a second return, after the completion of the second part of the Double Punishment. At that time, Jews will come from all over the world, and Isaiah makes it very clear that he is talking about that Pre-Millennial or even into the Millennial return. But Jeremiah isn't talking about that. He is talking about 70 years away.
God continues that those who were not taken into exile have harshness, disease, famine, sword and death in their future. They are to be made an example for the nations. God is saying that the exiles are far far better off than those not taken. God has protected the best in fact. What a message. What a twist on how the exiles would have been thinking of their situation.
2024 - God sent them prophet after prophet and they did not listen. Quite the opposite is the case after they return. Once they come back from Babylon, the prophets are only around for a little while, and all they talk about is rebuilding the Temple and the second coming. Or so it seems to me today. The warnings to repent, return, and obey go away. For 400 years until John the Baptist. And even John does no miracles...like Isaiah an Jeremiah don't do any. The first exile was because they wouldn't listen to the prophets. The second was because they wouldn't listen to the Messiah.
God specifically names two false prophets whom Neb will capture, and kill before the eyes of the exiles. They won't just be killed...this is their specific fate:
22 Because of them this curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah in Babylon: "The LORD make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire," [Jer 29:22 ESV]
These two so-called prophets were adulterers. Again, we'll know them by their works.
2021 - What a curse to pronounce on a false teacher: May God have someone roast you in the fire. That's a pretty awful curse. I think that's OT stuff. In the NT, we turn them over to Satan.
Starting in 24, there is a story about Shemaiah, who seems to claim that God has made him priest instead of Jehoiada. Would need to review, and see who is who in this scenario. This Shemaiah had apparently assumed authority, or presumed it, and had ordered the "madmen" who were prophesying in God's name to be put in stocks and so on. Shemaiah receives a letter from the exiles (?) asking why he has not put Jeremiah in stocks. Shemaiah reads this letter to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is given a response to it from God. Jeremiah says write them back, and say that Shemaiah AND his descendants will not have anyone living, when deliverance comes. They're all going to end.