Chapter 44

This verse from God through Jeremiah to those of Judah now living in various cities in Egypt:

7 And now thus says the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves, to cut off from you man and woman, infant and child, from the midst of Judah, leaving you no remnant? [Jer 44:7 ESV]  God says the "family lines" of all these that have gone to Egypt are going to be cut off.  This is the end of them.  The destruction of Judah and Jerusalem was because the people made offering to other gods.  And now those who were lucky enough to survive the Babylonian invasion are offering sacrifices to Egyptian gods.  The gods of the very people God had destroyed in order to free them from captivity so many years before.  The stupidity is beyond belief.  They still do not fear the One, the only real God.  They insist on looking elsewhere.

God speaks in 44:11 and reminds them Judah was destroyed because of idol worship and the evil that goes with that.  Those He left in Judah are now in Egypt, worshiping Egyptian gods, doing Egyptian evil.  Are they just not capable of learning?  God says ALL who fled to Egypt will die there...except some fugitives.  (Why is this here?  Added later to make the passage true, because not everyone died?  That would be my claim as an atheist!  2020-not so.  Fugitives is better translated refugees.  Some of those from Judah, perhaps seeing their error, or not liking Egyptian life very much, go back home to Judah before Neb arrives in Egypt, and so a few, a very few, escape death in Egypt.) 

2023 - This verse:

13 I will punish those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, [Jer 44:13 ESV]

Still, they refuse to listen at all.  They believe their hardships are not because of God, but because they stopped worshiping their idols from home.  2020-wait wait wait....look at this.  In vs 15 we find this phrase "all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other gods".  Is this saying that the rebellion against God in Egypt, that the turning back to the false gods they had made offerings to in Judah, was led by the women?  Was it the men letting their wives take the lead that was the real problem?  It is the men talking first and "regurgitating" what their wives have told them to say, but then look at vs 19:

19 And the women said, "When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands' approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?" [Jer 44:19 ESV]  So the women are worshiping the "Queen of heaven".  The women are exercising their rights, they have usurped God's male place as head of all things, and they have elevated this Queen - since women deserve to be in charge, according to the curse in Genesis 3 - as the one that should be worshiped and they blame their present troubles not on their disobedience to God, but on their neglect of the queen of heaven.  Oh my!!!

2022 - Yes.  It is the women that lead this "return" to idolatry in the land of Egypt, and their spineless husbands do nothing to stop it.  The men did such a bad job in Jerusalem that the women take over in Egypt.  Wow.

2022 - This verse:

19 And the women said, "When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands' approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?" [Jer 44:19 ESV]

I checked MSB on this phrase to see what Egyptian goddess they were worshiping.  They were not.  Back in Israel, they had been worshiping Ishtar, an Assyrian and Babylonian goddess also called Ashtoreth and Astarte, the wife of Baal, or Molech.  "Because these deities symbolized generative power, their worship involved prostitution."  This note is found at Jer 7:18.  The note on 44:19 points out that the title "queen of heaven" is "a title Roman Catholicism erroneously attributes to Mary, the mother of Jesus, in a blending of Christianity with paganism.  The Jews' twisted thinking credits the idol with the prosperity of pre-captivity Judah, further mocking the greatness of God."  So they saw their ill-fortunes in Israel not as God's punishment for their idol worship, but as the idols punishing them for NOT continuing to worship them!

2023 - It reads as if, at least in Pathros, pretty much everyone who had sought asylum from Nebuchadnezzar and fled to Egypt from Jerusalem, were worshiping "the queen of heaven".  With their husband's consents, these women had decided that the problem was that they STOPPED worshiping this pagan idol while still in Jerusalem - perhaps because their husbands had listened to Jeremiah's warnings and put a stop to it.  But now they're in Egypt, and as refugees, they probably really were worse off than at home - after all, God told them NOT to go to Egypt, so they shouldn't have expected things to be better there.  And instead of recognizing this, and heading back home, they instead decide to re-start their queen worshiping, and their weak-minded husbands let it go rather than heap trouble with the wife on top of trouble with God.  So messed up. 

So Jeremiah points out that they have it all upside down and backwards:

23 It is because you made offerings and because you sinned against the LORD and did not obey the voice of the LORD or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his testimonies that this disaster has happened to you, as at this day." [Jer 44:23 ESV]   Jeremiah leaves them no excuse.  The attribute their plight to their neglect of the false gods they left in Judah.  Jeremiah says worshiping those gods is what caused Judah to fall.  They are precisely deceived.  I think it is significant that as he speaks, in vs 20, it is to "men and women", and in vs 24 he speaks to "all the people, AND all the women".  Surely the women were leading this rebellion.

2024 - It occurred to me this morning that God operated differently in the world in Jeremiah's time than He does today.  In the OT, God intervenes personally, directly, and through the prophets that he spoke to with messages to be delivered to the people.  God directly protected Israel from the surrounding nations, up to causing 80,000 of Sennacherib's troops to die overnight, up to sending an invasion from Egypt to the north to draw off a great army invading Israel.  And all the bad things that DID happen, were God chastising Israel through other means.  Raiders, armies, death and destruction, famine, and I believe many disease and pestilence that we really don't hear much about.  We have no death and infant mortality statistics from this time.  Today, God is not so direct.  Today, Jesus is our advocate, our ruler, our King and our High priest.  He has been given all power in the spiritual kingdom, and he has put the Holy Spirit within us.  God deals now not with nations but with individuals.  Christian nations do well.  Pagan nations do not.  And both are home to great injustice, both with the bad doing well and the good doing poorly, just to show that God is not dealing with the world today as he did in Israel's day.  Today, it is ALL bad, because salvation is freely offered to everyone on the basis of faith, and faith alone.  We don't "owe" sacrifices and drink offerings and all that.  We just have to believe.  But we have to believe despite all the horror that is going on in this world, and which seems to be getting worse every day.  Certainly it is in this country.

So blind.  Jeremiah tells them they have it backwards.  This verse:

26 Therefore hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah who dwell in the land of Egypt: Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the LORD, that my name shall no more be invoked by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, 'As the Lord GOD lives.' [Jer 44:26 ESV]  I believe God is telling them that He will not hear one word from these Jews in Egypt, no matter what.  He is done with them.  And the sign that what is befalling them is because of the will of God, and has nothing to do with any idols at home or in Egypt, He foretells that Pharoah Hophra, whom they look to for protection, will be given into the hands of his enemies, just as Zedekiah was given into the hands of his.  Per MSB note, Hophra was strangled by Amasis in 570 BC, which opened the door to the invasion of Egypt by Babylon.

2023 - Kind of a side note for later study - I note that in 44:12, 27, it is ONLY sword and famine that God says he will use against the unfaithful.  But in 44:13, 18, pestilence is added to them.  It is just an interesting contrast with all the other places these are named.  So what I have seen is that sometimes God says he will send all four - sword, pestilence, famine, and wild beasts.  Other times, only the first three are mentioned.  And at still other times, only sword and famine are mentioned.  Why would it be that God does not always send them all?  My working theory is that He sends all four when the place is to be wiped out completely.  I haven't verified, but I think it was all four when Israel fell to Assyria, and it will be all four in Revelation after the rapture.  When Judah and Jerusalem fall, God knows already that he will be bringing them back, so not as "complete" in throwing everything in, so only three of the four.  I have no theory, as yet, as to why it would be different here in Jer 44 for those who fled to Egypt...or maybe I do.  Here, God is only punishing the people, not the whole land.  Egypt is not the promised land anyway, so making Egypt a desolation in order to punish these Jews is really not necessary, and in the long run is not a part of his plan for them.  These are to die where they are because of their disobedience.  Sword and famine will affect mostly these refugees, because in a famine, Egypt will feed her own people before she feeds refugees.  And the sword...well that is always present, used by the organized government, and can be "bound" or "loosed" as needed.