1And these are the words of the missive that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exiles and to the priests and to the prophets and to all the people whom Nebuchadrezzar had exiled from Jerusalem to Babylonia, 2After King Jeconiah and the queen mother and the eunuchs, the nobles of Judah and the craftsmen and the smiths had gone out from Jerusalem, 3by the hands of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah whom Zedekiah king of Judah had sent to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia, saying: 4“Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled to Babylonia: 5Build houses and dwell in them and plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6Take wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands and let them bear sons and daughters, and multiply there and do not dwindle. 7And seek the welfare of the city to which I exiled you and pray for it to the LORD, for through its welfare you shall have welfare. 8For thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel: Let not your prophets who are in your midst delude you, or your soothsayers, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream. 9For with lies do they prophesy to you in My name. I have not sent them, said the LORD. 10For thus said the LORD: When seventy years are fulfilled for Babylonia, I will single you out and bring about My good word to return you to this place. 11For I surely know the plans that I have devised for you, said the LORD, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you a future and hope. 12And you shall call Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13And you shall look for Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. 14And I will be found by you and restore your fortunes, and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I scattered you, said the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you. 15For you thought, the LORD has raised up prophets for us in Babylonia. 16For thus said the LORD concerning the king seated on the throne of David and concerning all the people dwelling in this city, your brothers who did not go out with you in exile. 17For thus said the LORD of Armies: I am about to send against them sword and famine and pestilence, and I will make them like the ghastly figs that are so bad that they cannot be eaten. 18And I will pursue them with sword and famine and pestilence and make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, an imprecation and a desolation and a hissing and a disgrace among all the nations where I have scattered you. 19Because they have not heeded My words, said the LORD, that I sent to them through My servants the prophets, repeatedly sending, and you did not heed them, said the LORD. 20As for you, heed the word of the LORD, all the exiles whom I sent from Jerusalem to Babylonia. 21Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel, concerning Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, who prophesy lies to you in My name. I am about to give them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia, and he shall strike them down before your eyes. 22And a curse shall be taken from them for all the exiles of Judah who are in Babylonia, saying, ‘May the LORD make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylonia roasted in fire.’ 23Inasmuch as they did a scurrilous thing in Israel and committed adultery with the wives of their fellow men and spoke a lying word in My name with which I did not charge them. As for Me, I know and am witness, said the LORD. 24And to Shemaiah the Nehelamite you shall say, saying: 25Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel, saying: Inasmuch as you have sent missives in your name to all the people who are in Jerusalem and to Zephaniah son of Maaseiah the priest and to the priests, saying, 26‘The LORD made you priest instead of Jehoiash the priest to serve as official in the house of the LORD for every madman playing the prophet, and you were to put him in stocks and in the pillory. 27And now, why did you not rebuke Jeremiah the Anothite, who played the prophet to you? 28For thus did he send to us in Babylonia, saying, It will be a long time. Build houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat their fruit.’” 29And Zephaniah the priest read this missive in the hearing of Jeremiah the prophet. 30And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, 31“Send to all the exiles, saying, Thus said the LORD concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite: Inasmuch as Shemaiah prophesied to you when I did not send him and made you trust in a lie, 32therefore, thus said the LORD, I am about to make a reckoning with Shemaiah the Nehelamite and with his seed. No man of his shall dwell among this people, and he shall not see the good that I do for My people, said the LORD, for he has spoken rebellion against the LORD.”
CHAPTER 29 NOTES
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1. the missive. Although the Hebrew sefer often has the sense of “book,” it can designate anything set down in writing on a scroll. In this instance it clearly refers to a letter, but it is a communication of public and prophetic import, hence the more formal translation choice of “missive.” But what is Jeremiah doing in this sending of missives to the exiles in Babylonia? One might think he has enough on his hands with a contentious populace and a hostile king in Judah. This entire episode must be read in the context of Jeremiah’s confrontation with the false prophet Hananiah, recorded in the previous chapter. For Jeremiah, everything in his prophetic mission is at stake in distinguishing between true and false prophecy. Hananiah had predicted that the exiles would return to their land in just two years. One infers that he had counterparts in Babylonia itself who were deluding the people with similar rosy predictions. Against this, Jeremiah wants to make it perfectly clear to the exiles that they will have a long residence in Babylonia before any return can take place (verses 5–7).
2. the craftsmen and the smiths. As is also noted in 2 Kings, Nebuchadnezzar took pains to exile skilled workers in order to ensure that the Judahites would not have the capacity to manufacture weapons.
6. multiply there and do not dwindle. The first verb echoes the “be fruitful and multiply” of the Creation story. With the prospect of a long stay in Babylonia ahead of them, the exiles are enjoined to settle into the place, conduct normal lives, establish a flourishing community. In the event, when the opportunity of return was afforded after the Persian conquest of Babylonia, many in this community chose to stay there—it is at this point that Israel becomes both a people in its land and a diaspora community.
7. seek the welfare of the city to which I exiled you. The exiles do not exactly become patriotic naturalized Babylonians, but given their long-term stay in this place, they are enjoined to pray for the prosperity and safety of the city that is, after all, their habitat as well.
8. that you dream. Though the form of the Hebrew verb looks a little odd, it seems strained to construe it, as some have, to mean “cause to dream.”
10. When seventy years are fulfilled for Babylonia. This would take us to the 520s, about a decade after the destruction of the Babylonian empire by Persia. But the number of seventy is clearly formulaic, a way of indicating that the return to Zion will not occur for some three generations. In the Book of Daniel, this prophecy will be given a novel interpretation in which seventy is understood to be seventy units of seven years, thus bringing it more or less to the time when Daniel was written.
11. to give you a future and hope. Jeremiah thus does not cast himself merely as a doomsayer but rather as a prophet who envisages national restoration at a later moment in history.
16. For thus said the LORD concerning the king seated on the throne of David. Jeremiah is not really switching subjects, as it might momentarily seem. If the false prophets in Babylonia predict an imminent return to Zion, one has only to look to the true prophecy pronounced about those who remain in Judah: instead of a national restoration, things will become much worse, with the Judahite populace to be utterly devastated by sword and famine and plague.
19. My words . . . that I sent to them through My servants the prophets. This is Jeremiah’s great recurring theme: prophecy is God’s chief channel of communication with His people, and the people’s persistent refusal to heed its true prophets is the inexorable cause of the disaster about to overtake it.
20. heed the word of the LORD, all the exiles whom I sent from Jerusalem. The catastrophe that is about to engulf the homeland should be an object lesson to the exiles.
22. a curse shall be taken from them. This reverses the more common linguistic practice in which someone’s name is invoked as part of a blessing by future generations.
roasted. The verb is unusual, perhaps meant to convey the horror of the burning.
23. Inasmuch as they did a scurrilous thing in Israel and committed adultery with the wives of their fellow men. “Scurrilous thing,” nevalah, often refers to a sexual offense. That added note may be a bit surprising in a denunciation of false prophets. One suspects Jeremiah is referring to known facts: these so-called prophets are actually lascivious men guilty of scandalous acts.
25. you have sent missives in your name. The sender of the missives is Shemaiah.
27. why did you not rebuke Jeremiah the Anothite, who played the prophet to you? Prophecy is sometimes viewed in the biblical world as a form of madness (compare “every madman” in the previous verse), especially, as here, when the verb for prophecy appears in the reflexive conjugation, which implies giving into an ecstatic frenzy. Why, then, Shemaiah asks Zephaniah the priest, did he not treat Jeremiah as a lunatic and throw him in the stocks? The content of Jeremiah’s missive to the exiles, quoted in the next verse, is cited as evidence of his madness.