The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The setting is the final siege, with "Nebuchadnezzar... and all his army, and all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion" pressing on Jerusalem. God sends Jeremiah to Zedekiah with an unflinching word: "Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire." The king himself "shalt not escape... thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth." Yet mixed into the judgment is genuine mercy: "Thou shalt not die by the sword: But thou shalt die in peace," with the customary honours and mourning of a king. This is remarkable grace toward a weak and faithless ruler. Had Zedekiah obeyed and surrendered as Jeremiah urged, even more could have been spared (as chapter 38 shows). The historical note grounds it all in real time: this word came "against Lachish, and against Azekah: for these defenced cities remained", the last holdouts, soon to fall. God's word was landing in the very hour it described.

Gospel Focus

Even in a message of certain judgment, God weaves in mercy: "Thou shalt not die by the sword: But thou shalt die in peace." This is the character of God on display, "in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2). He is just, the city would burn as He said, yet He is never merciless; He grants what grace He can even to a failing king. It reminds us that God's judgments are always measured and truthful, and that there is mercy to be had even late, even for the undeserving, for those who will heed His word. Zedekiah's tragedy is that the mercy offered could have been far greater had he obeyed. God had told him plainly through Jeremiah that surrender meant life for the city (Jeremiah 38:17); his fear of men cost him and his people dearly. The lesson stands: partial, fearful obedience forfeits blessing God longed to give. When God speaks, whether in warning or in promise, the path of life is always full trust and obedience. He tells the truth about our situation, and He always leaves a door of mercy, do not, like Zedekiah, let fear keep you from walking through it.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Now comes the heart of the chapter. Under the terror of the siege, "Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people... to proclaim liberty", to release every Hebrew slave, as the law of Moses commanded. This was long overdue obedience; the law said a Hebrew servant should go free in the seventh year (Exodus 21; Deuteronomy 15), "but your fathers hearkened not unto me." For a moment, they did right: "then they obeyed, and let them go." God even commends it: "ye were now turned, and had done right in my sight, in proclaiming liberty." But it did not last. "Afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into subjection." When the Babylonians temporarily withdrew (verse 21), the slaveholders decided they wanted their free labour back and re-enslaved the very people they had just freed before God. God's charge is severe: "ye turned and polluted my name." They had sworn this covenant "in the house which is called by my name," and then trampled it. Their repentance was real enough to make a vow but too shallow to keep it once the pressure lifted.

Gospel Focus

This is a sobering portrait of foxhole repentance, the kind that turns to God only under pressure and abandons Him the moment the danger passes. Fear of the siege drove them to obey; relief from it drove them back to sin. How often the human heart cries out to God in crisis and forgets Him in calm. But God is not mocked; He saw both the vow and its betrayal. Real repentance is not a bargain struck in fear but a change of heart that holds when the crisis ends. "Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation... but the sorrow of the world worketh death" (2 Corinthians 7:10). There is also a warning about the seriousness of vows. They swore "a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name," then broke it, and God said they "polluted my name." "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it... Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay" (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5). And notice what God cared about so intensely here: the freedom of the oppressed. He is the God who brought His people "out of the house of bondmen," who commands liberty for the enslaved, and who sent His Son "to proclaim liberty to the captives." A faith that professes His name while holding others in bondage profanes that name. True devotion to the God of liberty shows itself in setting others free, not in re-chaining them for our own gain.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God pronounces sentence with devastating irony. "Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother... behold, I proclaim a liberty for you... to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine." Because they refused freedom to their brothers, God releases them, to judgment. They will be "removed into all the kingdoms of the earth." Then God invokes the very ritual of the broken covenant. To seal their oath, the leaders had "cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof", the ancient covenant ceremony in which the parties, by walking between the pieces of the slain animal, called down its fate on themselves if they broke their word. "The princes... the eunuchs... the priests... all the people" had passed between those pieces, and then betrayed the covenant. So God gives them the animal's fate: "their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven." Even Zedekiah and his princes will be handed over. And the temporary reprieve, when the Babylonian army "are gone up from you", will end: "I will command... and cause them to return to this city; and they shall fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire." Their self-made curse would fall exactly as they had sworn.

Gospel Focus

"Behold, I proclaim a liberty for you... to the sword." Here is a solemn truth: those who refuse God's ways do not escape into freedom but are released to ruin. Sin always promises liberty and delivers bondage; "while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption" (2 Peter 2:19). The people wanted freedom from God's command so they could keep their slaves; God gave them a freedom that destroyed them. But set against this dark irony shines the true and gracious liberty God loves to give. The deror they withheld is the very word of the Jubilee and of the Messiah's mission: Jesus stood in the synagogue and read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives... to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18). Christ came to proclaim the real liberty, freedom from sin's slavery, "if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). And there is a warning for the freed: having been set free, do not turn back to bondage as these slaveholders re-enslaved their brothers. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1). The covenant ritual points further still: a covenant broken demands the death enacted between the pieces, and at the cross Christ Himself bore the curse of the broken covenant for us (Galatians 3:13), so that we, who deserved the liberty "to the sword," might receive the liberty of the sons of God.