In Babylon it was assured to the exiles that “the Lord plans for your welfare, not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope. “Thus says the Lord by breaking a wooden yoke, you forge an iron yoke” Whenever we try to avoid the hardships of following God's will, of avoiding sin, we always make things worse for ourselves. There was a wooden yoke that Jeremiah was wearing as a symbol of his message, and the false prophet Hananiah broke it off from him as a sign of rejecting that message. In the analogy of the fig baskets, it is implied that those that had remained in Judah would perish while those who faced the exile in Babylon would be restored. The exile was meant to be penance, a moral regeneration and not the end of the Jewish nation. Amidst the condemnations you do see a promise of mercy however, which Judah didn't listen to, but even when it was too late God never intended to annihilate his people. They couldn't see beyond the worldly to realize that Judah had already been destroyed spiritually. All people could see was their lifestyles being threatened, even accusing Jeremiah of not being interested “in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin.” It's an unfortunate view of welfare. Jeremiah was being painted as a traitor, even possibly an agent of Babylon. It can take a huge toll on one, but the lesson is not to give up. A person sets out to follow God, but then encounters the opposition of the world, the agonies of temptation, or simply the unforeseen misfortunes of life. It's the personal conflict faced by a prophet, but reminiscent of a wide variety of vocations. ".the Lord is with me.my persecutors shall stumble and will not triumph. He is tempted to stop preaching, but doesn't go through with it. “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.All the day I am an object of laughter.the word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all day.cursed be the day on which I was born, may the day my mother gave birth never be blessed.Why did I come forth from the womb, to see sorrow and pain to end my days in shame.” Through Jeremiah's dialogue you see the vivid toll that persecution was taking on him. This is one of the most poignant accounts of a prophet's ministry in the entire Old Testament. “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests teach as they wish” “Among Jerusalem's prophets I saw deeds still more shocking Adultery, living in lies, siding with the wicked” “They say to those who despise the word of the Lord, 'Peace shall be yours” and to everyone who walks in hardness of heart, “no evil shall overtake you,' The last thing you would hear from the false prophets was that obedience to God involved some sort of difficulty or challenge to what was popular. Rampant idolatry, adultery, even child sacrifice was found in Judah, yet the people persisted in it and the nation was plagued by false prophets that failed to properly condemn this conduct and even participated in it. The Babylonian destruction of Judah was meant as a punishment for an apostate and utterly debauched civilization. So had begun the Babylonian Captivity.Īs always there is a moral element to the history here. Zedekiah was blinded and led into exile along with most of the Jewish population. Judah continued to intrigue against Babylon, against the advice of Jeremiah, leading to another siege in which the city and its temple were destroyed. The Babylonians took King Jehoiachin prisoner and Zedekiah became the new king. The latter intrigued against Babylon and Jerusalem was sieged in retaliation. Pharaoh Necho had killed King Josiah in battle, but Necho in turn was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar who also gained Judah. In the book of Leviticus, God had warned the Jewish people to obey the laws that had been given to them and to “not defile yourselves by any of these things which the nations whom I am driving out of your way have defiled themselves.otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it, just as it vomited out the nations before you.” The book of Jeremiah is about when this time finally came to pass, along with the sufferings and efforts of the eponymous prophet who had to bear witne In the book of Leviticus, God had warned the Jewish people to obey the laws that had been given to them and to “not defile yourselves by any of these things which the nations whom I am driving out of your way have defiled themselves.otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it, just as it vomited out the nations before you.” The book of Jeremiah is about when this time finally came to pass, along with the sufferings and efforts of the eponymous prophet who had to bear witness to it all.Īfter the fall of Assyria, Judah came under the Egyptian sphere of influence.
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