1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD when King Zedekiah sent to him Passhur son of Malkiah and Zephaniah son of Maaseiah the priest, saying: 2“Inquire, pray of the LORD on our behalf, for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia is battling against us. Perhaps the LORD will do for us according to all His wonders, and he will withdraw from us.” 3And Jeremiah said to them, “Thus shall you say to Zedekiah: 4Thus said the LORD God of Israel: I am about to turn round the weapons that are in your hands with which you do battle against the king of Babylonia and against the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the wall, and I will gather them inside the city. 5And I Myself will do battle against you with an outstretched hand and a strong arm and with anger and with wrath and with great fury. 6And I will strike down those who dwell in this city, man and beast, in a great pestilence they shall die. 7And afterward, said the LORD, I will give over Zedekiah king of Judah and his servants and the people and those remaining in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia and into the hands of their enemies and into the hands of those who seek their lives, and he shall strike them with the edge of the sword, he shall not spare them and shall not pity and shall show no mercy. 8And to this people you shall say; Thus said the LORD: I am about to set before you the way of life and the way of death. 9Who stays in this city shall die by the sword and by famine and by pestilence. And who goes out and goes over to the Chaldeans besieging you shall live, and his life shall become booty. 10For I have set My face against this city for evil and not for good, said the LORD. Into the hand of the king of Babylonia it shall be given, and he shall burn it in fire. 11And to the house of Judah, listen to the word of the LORD.”
12House of David, thus said the LORD:
Render justice every morning,
and save the man robbed from the oppressor’s hand.
lest My wrath spring out like fire
and burn with none to quench it
because of the evil of your acts.
13Look, I am against you, valley dweller,
rock of the plain, said the LORD,
those saying, “Who can come down upon us,
and who can enter our dwellings?”
14And I will exact judgment from you
according to the fruit of your acts, said the LORD.
And I will light a fire in her forest,
and it will consume all around her.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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2. Inquire, pray, of the LORD. This is a technical expression for inquiry of an oracle. What Zedekiah and his delegates are of course hoping for is a favorable oracle regarding the fate of the city, under siege by the Babylonians (most likely, in the period from 588 to 586 B.C.E., which would end in the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem).
Nebuchadrezzar. In other biblical books this name often appears as Nebuchadnezzar, though the spelling with two rs used here is more faithful to the Akkadian. Hebrew transliterations of foreign names show a considerable degree of distortion.
4. I am about to turn round the weapons that are in your hands. That is, I am going to render your weapons ineffectual, forcing you to fall back into the city.
the Chaldeans. These are the dominant ethnic group in Babylonia.
I will gather them. The antecedent of “them” is the Chaldeans.
5. an outstretched hand and a strong arm. This is a variation of the phrase used in Deuteronomy 4:34 (where it appears as “a strong hand and an outstretched arm”) to describe God’s intervention against Egypt on behalf of the Israelites. Here, the application is pointedly reversed as God intervenes against Israel.
7. his servants. This noun, when attached to a king, almost invariably refers to his courtiers or attendants.
he shall strike them with the edge of the sword. Zedekiah’s actual fate was perhaps worse than death: first he was forced to watch as his sons were murdered; then he was blinded and led off to captivity.
8. I am about to set before you the way of life and the way of death. This echoes Deuteronomy 30:19, where Israel is urged to “choose life.” The allusion is ironic because in this case the choice is between death and a life of captivity and exile. The phrase in the next verse, “his life shall become booty,” means booty to the Chaldeans.
12. House of David. The address is to the dynastic line, and “house of Judah” in the previous verse has the same meaning.
13. valley dweller. The reference is not certain. Since the entire poem appears to have in view the destruction of Jerusalem, as does the preceding prose prophecy, it is likely that the valley dwellers live in Jerusalem, which does have valleys as well as steep hills. But the next phrase, “rock of the plain,” has not been satisfactorily explained.
14. And I will light a fire in her forest. Lundbom proposes that the reference is to the royal palace, in which there was a hall called the Lebanon Forest House because of its extensive use of Lebanese cedar paneling. It seems more likely that what is to be burned is an actual forest—there were wooded areas in and around Jerusalem—and “it will consume all around her” thus plausibly invokes the destruction that extends beyond the city to the surrounding countryside. Through this entire prophecy, one readily sees why Jeremiah was a scorned or even hated figure in the eyes of his countrymen, here predicting the total destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah—a catastrophe that in fact was about to occur—at the very moment the city was under siege.