1The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD when Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia and all his force and all the kingdoms of the land of his dominion and all the peoples were doing battle against Jerusalem and against all its towns, saying, 2“Thus said the LORD God of Israel: Go and say to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him, Thus said the LORD: I am about to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylonia, and he shall burn it in fire. 3And you, you shall not escape from his hand, for you shall surely be caught and be given into his hand, and your eyes shall see the eyes of the king of Babylonia, and his mouth shall speak to your mouth, and you shall come to Babylonia. 4But listen to the word of the LORD, Zedekiah king of Judah. Thus said the LORD: You shall not die by the sword. 5In peace you shall die, and like the incense burnings of your fathers the former kings who were before you, so shall they burn incense for you. And ‘Woe, master’ shall they lament for you, for it is the word I have spoken, said the LORD.” 6And Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Zedekiah king of Judah all these words in Jerusalem. 7And the force of the king of Babylonia was doing battle against Jerusalem and against all the remaining towns of Judah, against Lachish and against Azekah, for these were left of the towns of Judah, fortress towns.
8The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD after King Zedekiah sealed a covenant with the people who were in Jerusalem, to proclaim a release for them, 9for every man to set free his male Hebrew slave and every man his Hebrew slavegirl, that no man should enslave a Judahite, his brother. 10And all the nobles and all the people who had entered the covenant listened to set free every man his male slave and every man his slavegirl so as not to enslave them anymore, and they listened and set them free. 11But they went back afterward and brought back the male slaves and the slavegirls whom they had set free, and they forced them to be male slaves and slavegirls. 12And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, 13“Thus said the LORD God of Israel: I Myself sealed a covenant with your fathers on the day I brought you out from the land of Egypt from the house of slaves, saying, 14At the end of seven years you shall send away each man his Hebrew brother who was sold to you and served you six years, and you shall set him free from you. But your fathers did not listen to Me and did not bend their ear. 15And you should turn back today and do what is right in My eyes to proclaim a release, each man to his fellow, and you should seal a covenant before Me in the house upon which My name is called. 16But you turned back and profaned My name, and you brought back each man his male slave and each man his slavegirl whom you had set wholly free, and you forced them to be male slaves and slavegirls for you. 17Therefore, thus said the LORD: You, you did not listen to Me to proclaim a release, each man to his brother and each man to his fellow. I am about to proclaim a release for you, said the LORD, to the sword and to pestilence and to famine, and I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 18And I will make the men trespassing My covenant, who did not fulfill the words of the covenant that they sealed before Me like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts, 19the nobles of Judah and the nobles of Jerusalem, the eunuchs and the priests and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf. 20And I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life, and their carcasses shall be food for the fowl of the heavens and the beasts of the earth. 21And Zedekiah king of Judah and his nobles I will give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life and into the hand of the force of the king of Babylonia that is withdrawing from you. 22Look, I am about to give the command, said the LORD, and I will bring them back to this city and they shall do battle against it and capture it and burn it in fire, and the towns of Judah I will turn into a desolation, with none dwelling there.”
CHAPTER 34 NOTES
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1. all the kingdoms . . . of his dominion and all the peoples. This is a realistic notation: vassal kings and vassal populations were obliged to join the imperial forces in the military campaign.
5. In peace you shall die. In the event, this was a highly qualified peace. The captive Zedekiah was forced to watch the murder of his sons, and then the Babylonians blinded him.
the incense burnings. The Hebrew says only “burnings,” but cremation was not an option in ancient Israel, and there is evidence that burning incense was sometimes part of funeral rites.
7. Lachish. Lachish was the principal fortified city of Judah after Jerusalem, and a quantity of written and archaeological evidence has survived bearing on its siege and capture.
8. to proclaim a release. This is the idiom used for the release of slaves in the jubilee year. Setting free slaves in a time of siege had a certain practical logic: the slaves could no longer work in the fields; their owners could be relieved of the responsibility of feeding them when food was scarce during the siege; and perhaps the freed slaves could have been conscripted to fight.
9. his brother. Although the term is obviously used in an extended sense to indicate belonging to the same ethnic group, its implication of close kinship is used pointedly.
11. But they went back afterward. This may have been during the early months of 587 B.C.E., when the Babylonians temporarily lifted the siege, an event alluded to in verse 21. This act of reclaiming the slaves reflects not only the bad faith of the Judahites but also their previous inclination to ignore the injunction (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:1–2) that a Hebrew slave had to be set free at the end of seven years. He was thus less a slave than an indentured servant. God invokes the violation of this law in verse 14.
16. set wholly free. This translation understands the added Hebrew term lenafsho as an intensifier of the condition of freedom. Others think it means “according to his desire.”
18. like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts. This is a covenant-making ritual well attested in the ancient Near East and reflected in Abraham’s covenant with God in Genesis 15. The evident idea was that if a party to the pact violated it, his fate should be like that of the cloven animal. The verb “cut” picks up the Hebrew idiom for sealing a covenant, which is literally “to cut a covenant.” The verse incorporates another pun because “pass between” and “trespass” are the same Hebrew verb.
21. that is withdrawing from you. See the comment on verse 11. Zedekiah is not to imagine that the lifting of the siege means he and his kingdom will escape from the onslaught of the Babylonians.
22. Look, I am about to give the command . . . and I will bring them back to this city. God now makes it perfectly explicit that the Babylonian withdrawal is temporary and that He will soon call back the invading army to complete its work of destruction. Since we can assume that this prophecy was pronounced by Jeremiah early in 587 B.C.E., he either would have surmised from the strategic situation that this must be a temporary measure or would have been led to that conclusion by his deep conviction that the destruction of the city had been divinely decreed and was inevitable.