Jeremiah 26-29

[wolfpurplemoon]

Jeremiah is put on trial because everyone thinks he is a false prophet, they are rather easily convinced that he's really talking to God when he repeats what he'd already been saying with more emphasis on the 'God told me to say it' and because a previous prophet who was killed also prophesied Jerusalem becoming an uninhabitable wasteland because of the sins of the people.

God wants all nations to submit to rule under the king of Babylon, until Babylon is destroyed by other enemies. Not sure what anyone is achieving through this temporary submission, but God will destroy anyone who refuses, so the benefit is to avoid getting destroyed. Nice motivation there.

A prophet who predicts that the servitude will only last two years is killed by God for lying. Jeremiah says that if you predict good things then it has to come true, because I guess if you predict bad things you can say that it was averted because God relented.

God tells Jeremiah to write a letter to the exiled people in Babylon, which begs the question that should have occurred to me earlier in this book, why is God only talking to Jeremiah when Jeremiah is alone? And telling him to go out and spread God's message. Why doesn't he tell everyone himself? This is part of why I am so sceptical about the truth of these prophesies, but mainly because they could easily have been written after the fact or the events that were predicted were only recorded in the pages of the bible.

Comments

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

Jeremiah 26 is approximately 12 years prior to Jerusalem's fall. The Babylonian empire was on the move and fighting the Assyrian empire at Nineveh at about this time. Jehoiakim was established as King of Judah by the Egyptian pharaoh after Egypt raided Judah and deposed Jehoiakim's brother Jehoahaz. Jehoiakim paid tribute to Egypt to keep them appeased. This chapter is years prior to the previous 2 chapters. The warnings he is giving here are to a new king (the third he's warned in his career) and he is hopeful that this new king, Jehoiakim would listen.

Again, God is offering forgiveness to the people if they will return to the covenant. In the trial, the people decided to listen to the precedent set by another prophet from about 130 years earlier where another king was given the same choice and chose to follow God. His kingdom was saved. I find it interesting that the people wouldn't execute Jeremiah, but wouldn't heed his warnings. It suggests that Jeremiah was protected, but the people were still freely choosing to do what they wanted in violation of the covenant.

Chapter 27 takes place 30 years after Chapter 26. Babylon has conquered Judah and set up the puppet king Zedekiah. God tells the leaders of the area that Babylon will control them, but at some point, Babylon will fall (this is about 60 years before the fall of Babylon). He also says that resisting Babylon, until that time, is going to lead to more death and destruction. Both of these prophecies were shown to be correct.

The exchange with Hananiah is an example of what happens to false prophets. Note that prophets made a living by being accurate. Hananiah prophesied that the Babylonian empire would fall in 2 years. My guess is that Hananiah was trying to get a job in Jerusalem (he came from another city) and probably intended to live for free in Jerusalem as a prophet to the king. He probably intended to stay in Jerusalem for only a short while, but by saying things the king would like, he'd be paid and fed. By making such a bold proclamation, he had sealed his own fate. He would have been executed at the end of the 2 years (unless, of course, he came up with some other prophecy that would have countered his earlier one or if he fled).
The section about peace is interesting. Note that Hananiah never spoke about repentance of sin, of the people worshiping idols, etc. He simply said that God would end the rule of Babylon and there would be peace. Never in the history of God's prophets had God promised peace without referring to the covenant and the appropriate behavior of the people. Jeremiah is somewhat making fun of Hananiah's obviously lacking approach. He's saying in effect, "you prophesied peace without condition, we'll see if what you said was true." As to his reference to "predict[ing] bad things", Jeremiah is being somewhat instructional to both Hananiah and to the priests who were witnessing the discussion. He was saying that prophets proclaim the consequences of violating the covenant (and in some cases would proclaim destruction to nations who were not in the covenant; see Jonah). The prophecies were warnings to turn from unrighteous behavior, but never had a prophet said just wait a little while, doing all the sin that you're currently doing and there will be peace because that wouldn't match what God would have wanted the people to do.

Jeremiah writes the letter to the exiles to keep them informed of the same prophecies that he was giving in Jerusalem. One side effect of that is that there would have been two independent documents of the same prophecy, one in Babylon and one in Jerusalem. Years later, if the documents didn't match, they would have proven that Jeremiah wasn't accurate in his prophecies. Of course they did match up, the letter and the prophecies he made in Jerusalem both said that the Babylon rule would last 70 years, and that the exiles should submit to Babylon during this time period.