1At the beginning of the kingship of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying: 2Thus said the LORD, “Make for yourself bands and yoke bars, and you shall put them on your neck. 3And you shall send them to the king of Edom and to the king of Moab and to the king of the Ammonites and to the king of Tyre and to the king of Sidon in the hand of the messengers coming to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. 4And you shall charge them to their masters, saying, Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel, thus shall you say to your masters: 5I Myself made the earth, humankind and beast, over the face of the earth, with My great power and with My outstretched arm, for him who was right in My eyes. 6And now, I Myself have given all these lands into the hands of Nebuchadrezzar My servant, king of Babylonia, and even the beasts of the field I have given to him to serve him. 7And all the nations shall serve him and his son and his son’s son until the time of his land comes—he, too—and many nations and great kings shall make him serve. 8And it shall be, that the nation and the kingdom that does not serve him, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia, and that does not put its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylonia, by the sword and by famine and by pestilence will I reckon with that nation, said the LORD, until I make an end of them by his hand. 9As for you, do not listen to your prophets and to your sorcerers and to your dreams and to your soothsayers and to your wizards who say to you, saying, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylonia.’ 10For lies do they prophesy to you so as to take you far from your land, for I will scatter you and you shall perish. 11And the nation that puts its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylonia and serves him I will leave on its land, said the LORD, and it will till it and dwell upon it.” 12And to Zedekiah king of Judah I spoke according to these words, saying, “Bring your neck into the yoke of the king of Babylonia and serve him and his people, and live. 13Why should you die, you and your people, by the sword and by famine and by pestilence, as the LORD has spoken of the nation that does not serve the king of Babylonia? 14And do not listen to the words of the prophets who say to you, saying: ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylonia,’ for lies do they prophesy to you. 15For I have not sent them, said the LORD, and they prophesy lies in My name, so that I will scatter you and you shall perish, you and the prophets who prophesy to you. 16And to the priests and to all the people I have spoken, saying, Thus said the LORD: do not listen to your prophets who prophesy to you, saying, ‘Look, the vessels of the house of the LORD are now soon to be brought back from Babylonia,’ for lies do they prophesy to you. 17Do not listen to them. Serve the king of Babylonia and live. Why should this city become a ruin? 18And if they are prophets, and if the word of the LORD is with them, let them entreat, pray, the LORD of Armies that the vessels remaining in the house of the LORD and in the house of Judah not come to Babylonia. 19For thus said the LORD of Armies concerning the pillars and the basins and the stands and concerning the rest of the vessels remaining in this city, 20which Nebuchadrezzar did not take when he exiled Jeconiah king of Judah from Jerusalem to Babel with all the aristocrats of Judah and Jerusalem. 21For thus said the LORD of Armies God of Israel concerning the vessels remaining in the house of the LORD and in the house of the king of Judah and Jerusalem: 22To Babylonia shall they be brought, and there shall they be until the day I attend to them and bring them up and return them to this place.”
CHAPTER 27 NOTES
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1. At the beginning of the kingship of Jehoiakim. Although this is the reading of the Masoretic Text, the name of the king appears to be a scribal error, for these events occur during the reign of Zedekiah, and it is he who is mentioned in what follows.
2. Make for yourself bands and yoke bars. This is another symbolic act that the prophet is called on to perform. “Yoke” in biblical usage is a recurrent image for subjugation (and the very English word “subjugation” means “being under the yoke”). The repeated verb “serve” in this prophecy, which can also mean “work” or “worship,” has its political sense, “to be subject to.”
3. Edom . . . Moab . . . the Ammonites . . . Tyre . . . Sidon. A conference of these kings took place in Jerusalem in 594–593 B.C.E. to consider an alliance that would resist Babylonian domination. Jeremiah’s message is that any such resistance will prove futile.
5. I Myself made the earth. God’s status as creator of all things on earth implies that it is absolutely within His power to decide which nations will be masters and which subjugated.
7. until the time of his land comes. History is viewed, quite realistically, as a cycle of shifting conquest and defeat. For now, Nebuchadrezzar reigns supreme, but a time will come when his nation will fall to another empire—in point of historical fact, it would be the Persians.
8. until I make an end of them by his hand. Throughout this vision of history, emperors are merely the instruments of God’s purpose.
10. For lies do they prophesy to you so as to take you far from your land. It is Jeremiah’s political view that exile can be avoided if Judah accepts vassal status under Babylonia. This notion is spelled out in the next verse.
14. And do not listen to the words of the prophets . . . for lies do they prophesy to you. This entire prophecy abounds in repetitions and sounds a little prolix. The rhetorical looseness may be encouraged by the prose medium.
16. Look, the vessels of the house of the LORD are now soon to be brought back. A portion of the temple valuables had been carted off by the Babylonians when they took the Judahite king Jeconiah into exile, as is stated in verse 20.
19. the pillars and the basins and the stands. This constitutes a small catalogue of the sacred furniture that is destined to be looted and taken away to Babylonia if the Judahites persist in their futile resistance to the invading forces.
22. To Babylonia shall they be brought. This prophecy of the despoliation of the Temple was fulfilled in the final defeat and destruction of 586 B.C.E., seven or eight years after the enunciation of this prophecy. The added note that a time will come when the vessels will be brought back to Jerusalem sets the stage for the prophecies of the return to Zion of Second Isaiah, who was active in the Babylonian exile a few decades after Jeremiah. Centuries later, the author of the episode of the writing on the wall in Daniel will still be pondering the violation of the transfer of the sacred vessels into Babylonian hands.