JEREMIAH
26
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2003 James Melough
26:1. “In the
beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this
word from the Lord, saying,”
26:2. “Thus
saith the Lord; Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak unto all the
cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord’s house, all the words that
I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:”
After the death of the good
king Josiah the people had made Jehoahaz his son king, but after a three-month
reign he was deposed by Pharaoh-nechoh who imposed a tribute of a hundred
talents of silver, and one talent of gold upon the land, and made Eliakim,
another son of Josiah, king instead, changing his name to Jehoiakim, the
imposition of the new name signifying the authority of Pharaoh, see 2 Ki
23:30-34.
It seems therefore that God
chose the beginning of the reign of a new king of Judah as a propitious time
to repeat His warnings to the people, their gathering in the Temple being
perhaps in connection with the coronation of the new king, or as suggested by
others, the feast of Tabernacles. What is written here is a virtual summary
of the message recorded in chapter 7. This continued attempt to warn the
people doesn’t imply that God was giving them a second chance, for as noted
already, their national doom was irrevocable, but rather that He was appealing
to individuals to secure the salvation of their souls in view of the impending
slaughter at the hand of the Babylonians.
The same conditions prevail
today. Apostate Christendom and a godless world have sealed their doom, but
God’s appeal through the Gospel still goes out to the individual here and
there who may give heed and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, thus
guaranteeing the salvation of his soul, but not necessarily of his life, in
these perilous times preceding the fast approaching Tribulation.
The imperative of sounding
the warning without diminishing a single word, is as relevant to the preaching
of the Gospel today as it was to the warning Jeremiah was to pronounce, but
the false teachers with which apostate Christendom swarms, are guilty of that
very offence. They do “diminish” the message, for the “gospel” they preach is
fraudulent, having been expunged of warning relative to hell, the imaginary
God they present being one who is so loving that he will receive everyone into
his heaven! A terrible awakening awaits them and their deluded followers, for
the hell whose existence they deny is the very place to which they are going.
26:3. “If so be
they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me
of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their
doings.”
This has to be understood in
the context of the fact that nationally Judah was doomed without any hope of
reprieve. The word is addressed to individuals, not to the nation. Salvation
of the soul, but not necessarily of the body, was available where there was
individual repentant faith; and as for God’s repenting, this is an
anthropopathism, i.e., the ascription of human passions or feelings to a thing
or being not human: in the present instance God. Repentance implies a
previous error of judgment which needs to be corrected, but since God is
omniscient He is incapable of error, and therefore beyond the need to repent.
Relative to the evil with
which God purposed to punish their evil doings, as already discussed, his
being a believer does not necessarily exempt an individual from having to
share in the punishment of the nation to which he belongs. The believing
remnant within the apostate mass of the nation was not exempted from being
also carried captive into Babylon with their unbelieving fellows. The great
difference, however, is that the believer has the assurance of God’s presence
always with him, e.g., Daniel’s three friends in the midst of the furnace; and
even where God permits such a man to die, he has the assurance that death
simply transports his soul into heaven to be with Christ “which is far
better.”
26:4. “And thou
shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; If ye will not hearken to me, to
walk in my law, which I have set before you,”
26:5. “To
hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto you, both
rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not hearkened:”
26:6. “Then will
I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the
nations of the earth.”
Verses four and five do not
hold out hope, but rather emphasize their wickedness as being the reason for
His destroying them.
Verse six discloses the
nature of that coming destruction. As Shiloh had once been home to the
Tabernacle which housed the Ark until, because of the wickedness of the
people, God had permitted the Philistines to capture the Ark, and Shiloh to be
abandoned, so would He also permit the Babylonians to destroy both
Temple and city. As Shiloh and the Ark had become a mere
fetish around which revolved an empty ritualistic so-called worship, so had
Jerusalem and the Temple also become a fetish involving a similar hypocritical
worship; and as the one had been destroyed so would the other be also.
Jerusalem’s being made a
curse to all the nations is understood by some to mean that it would be used
by them in pronouncing a curse on a person, place or thing; by others, that
the nations would curse the city; and by others, that in the eyes of the
nations the city would be viewed as a place under the curse of God. There is
probably a measure of truth in all three.
26:7. “So the
priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these
words in the house of the Lord.”
The prophet had faithfully
fulfilled his commission: all had heard his warning. Surely his diligence
rebukes our disobedience, for we have been given a similar commission to warn
men of impending judgment, yet does not honesty compel us to confess how
faithless we have been in fulfilling our commission?
26:8. “Now it
came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had
commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets
and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.”
Nothing arouses the natural
man’s hatred more than the proclamation of God’s truth, nor is any such hatred
more vicious than that of him who is religious but unconverted, see the
account of Stephen’s death in Acts 6. History bears eloquent testimony to the
murderous character of that enmity by religious Rome against true believers
during the thousand years of the Dark ages, c. 500-1500 AD; and it is
significant that in this verse the priests head the list of those who sought
Jeremiah’s life, their abettors the prophets obviously being the false
prophets. Nor should anyone forget that those responsible for the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ were the Jewish religious leaders.
26:9. “Why hast
thou prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, This house shall be like
Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an inhabitant? And all the
people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.”
It has never been different:
murderous religious zealots, those who are farthest away from God, are the
inveterate enemies of Him and His people, and are they who are foremost in
promoting mere religion, even though the tenets of their evil doctrine are
diametrically opposed to the teaching of God-breathed Scripture.
26:10. “When the
princes of Judah
heard these things, then they came up from the king’s house unto the house of
the Lord, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the Lord’s house.”
Their sitting down in the
entry of the gate means that they took their places to sit in judgment on the
matter which had caused the uproar. They are generally believed to have been
the godly men appointed by the good king Josiah.
26:11. “Then
spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people,
saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city,
as ye have heard with your ears.”
Caring nothing about whether
Jeremiah was the Lord’s prophet and his words therefore true, they would kill
him simply because what he had said was the opposite of what they wanted to
believe, even though there wasn’t a word of Scripture to support their wrong
beliefs. Nor has anything changed through the centuries. The false teaching
of Rome, for example, which is nothing but the old Babylonian pagan system
disguised in Christian dress, is accepted by deluded millions as the very Word
of God, even though virtually everything it teaches is in direct opposition
to Scripture.
Without waiting to see
whether Jeremiah’s words might indeed be true, they would kill him, as a later
generation of that same people killed the Lord Himself, and significantly, on
a trumped up charge of lies also concerning the Temple, for as Jeremiah
foretold its destruction so did the Lord also foretell the destruction of the
Temple which existed in His day, Mt 24:1-2. See also Mt 26:61; 27:40.
The words of both were
fulfilled, as will be also every word of Scripture, everything in the world
today pointing to the imminence of the foretold Tribulation, and reminding us
of what Peter has written concerning prophecy, “We have also a more sure word
of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that
shineth in a dark place ....” 2 Pe 1:19.
26:12. “Then
spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The Lord
sent me to prophesy against (concerning) this house and against (concerning)
this city all the words that ye have heard.”
Knowing the futility of
attempting to change closed minds, God’s servant offered no other defense than
to reiterate that what he had said had been given him by God, being content to
let the fulfillment of the prophecy be his vindication. All who seek to serve
the Lord would do well to follow his example.
26:13.
“Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord
your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced
against you.”
As noted above, the doom of
the nation was irrevocable, for God foreknew that the bulk of the people would
refuse to repent. These words were addressed to the rare individuals who
would repent and thereby save their souls, though not necessarily their
lives. There would be no change of mind on God’s part relative to the
destruction of the Temple and city, and the Babylonian captivity of those who
would survive the slaughter.
The impending doom of
today’s equally evil world is also irrevocable, there being available - but
only to repentant believers - the salvation of their souls, but not
necessarily preservation from death, for as God foreknew that there would be
no repentance on the part of the bulk of the people of Judah, so does He also
know that there will be none on the part of the vast majority of those upon
the earth today.
26:14. “As for
me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.”
Jeremiah was satisfied to
leave himself in God’s hands, knowing that nothing men might do to him would
be apart from Divine direction or permission. Since that same principle
governs the lives of all men, it behooves us to obey Him, so that we might be
able to rest in the peaceful enjoyment of His promise, “And we know that all
things work together for good to them that love (obey) God,” Ro 8:28.
Relative to the connection between love and obedience, see Jn 14:15, “If ye
love me, keep my commandments,” and verse 21, “He that hath my commandments,
and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me....”
26:15. “But know
ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent
blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof:
for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your
ears.”
He would not, however, leave
them without warning as to the consequences that would follow his murder:
their shedding his innocent blood would bring the vengeance of God upon them.
Surely this scene recalls
what transpired in connection with the mock trial and murder of the Lord Jesus
Christ, when Pilate, seeking to absolve himself of guilt, “... washed his
hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just
person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on
us, and on our children,” Mt 27:24-25. That foolish and fatal invocation of
the people has had a terrible fulfillment in the twenty centuries that have
elapsed since then, for beginning with the destruction of the city by the
Romans in AD 70, the slaughter of the people, and the scattering of the
survivors amongst the nations, the sword has followed them where ever they
have fled, spilling their blood like water, their slaughter yet to reach its
zenith in the fast approaching Great Tribulation.
26:16. “Then
said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; this
man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our
God.”
The fickle people had first
been influenced by the priests and false prophets to declare Jeremiah worthy
of death; but now, influenced by the godly princes, they changed their minds
and believed that his words had indeed been given him by God, and accordingly
declared that there was no reason to kill him.
As is pointed out in the
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary, the fickle multitude, which just
three days earlier had hailed the Lord Jesus Christ as the long-awaited
Messiah, clamored for His death, see Mt 21:9; 27:20-25.
26:17. “Then
rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of
the people, saying,”
26:18. “Micah
the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to
all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Zion shall be
plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the
house as the high places of a forest.”
Micah, about seventy years
earlier, had prophesied both to Israel, the ten northern tribes, and to Judah
of coming judgment; and these elders obviously took Micah’s warning as
validation of Jeremiah’s words. The verse quoted by the elders is from Micah
3:12. (A verse-by-verse study of the book of Micah by the author of this
present study, is also available on this web site).
26:19. “Did
Hezekiah king of Judah
and all Jerusalem put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and
besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had
pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls.”
The account of the life of
the good king Hezekiah is preserved in 2 Chr 29-32. Relative to its being
said here that “the Lord repented,” see comments on verse 3 of this present
chapter. In the days of Hezekiah the repentance was national, with the result
that the Lord postponed the threatened judgment. In the days of Jeremiah,
however, only a few individuals turned to the Lord, but there was no national
repentance, with the result that there was no further postponement: the
judgment fell when Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC finally destroyed Jerusalem,
slaughtered thousands of the people, and carried the remainder captive to
Babylon.
“Thus might we procure great
evil against our souls” expresses the fear that their killing of Jeremiah
would be very likely to bring the speedy judgment of God upon their guilty
heads.
26:20. “And
there was also a man that prophesied in the name of the Lord, Urijah the son
of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, who prophesied against this city and against
the land according to all the words of Jeremiah.”
This Urijah (Uriah) was also
a prophet and contemporary of Jeremiah, their warnings of impending judgment
being virtually the same.
26:21. “And when
Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the princes, heard his
words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah heard it, he was
afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt;”
26:22. “And
Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor,
and certain men with him into Egypt.”
26:23. “And they
fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king;
who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the
common people.”
The murderous antipathy of
Jehoiakim to the word of God and to those who proclaimed it, is typical of the
natural man, because that word exposes his sin and condemns him.
Why Jeremiah wasn’t also
executed isn’t explained, so it may be presumed that God in His sovereignty
and wisdom, and for His Own unrevealed purposes, preserved Jeremiah’s life,
while permitting His other servant to die. Urijah’s death, however, may not
be taken to mean that God loved him less than He did Jeremiah.
26:24.
“Nevertheless the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that
they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.”
All that is known of Ahikam
is that he was one of those whom Josiah sent to inquire of Huldah the
prophetess, 2 Ki 22:12-14; 2 Chr 34:20; and that he was the father of Gedaliah
whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed ruler over the remnant left in Israel following
the deportation of the people in 586 BC. He appears to have been a godly man,
and possessed of considerable power since he was able to save Jeremiah out of
the hand of Jehoiakim.
[Jeremiah
27]