Jeremiah 29

29 : 1 Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders of the captivity, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon : 2 (after that Jeconiah the king, and the queen-mother, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen, and the smiths, were departed from Jerusalem ;) 3 by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah 4 king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,) saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all the captivity, whom I have caused to be carried 5 away captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon : Build ye houses, and dwell in them ; and plant 6 gardens, and eat the fruit of them ; take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters ; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and 7 daughters ; and multiply ye there, and be not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the LORD for it : for in 8 the peace thereof shall ye have peace. For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel : Let not your prophets that be in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you, neither 9 hearken ye to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto 10 you in my name : I have not sent them, saith the LORD. For thus saith the LORD, After seventy years be accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you, and perform my good word 11 toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope in your 12 latter end. And ye shall call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken 13 unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your 14 heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD, and I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD ; and I will bring you again unto the place whence I caused you to be 15 carried away captive. For ye have said, The LORD hath raised us up prophets in Babylon. 16 For thus saith the LORD concerning the king that sitteth upon the throne of David, and concerning all the people that dwell in this city, your brethren that are not gone forth with you 17 into captivity ; thus saith the LORD of hosts : Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are 18 so bad. And I will pursue after them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth, to be an execration, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations 19 whither I have driven them : because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, wherewith I sent unto them my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them ; 20 but ye would not hear, saith the LORD. Hear ye therefore the word of the LORD, all ye of the captivity, whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.

21. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and concerning Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, which prophesy a lie unto you in my name: Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall

22 slay them before your eyes; and of them shall be taken up a curse by all the captives of Judah which are in Babylon, saying, The LORD make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab,

23 whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire: because they have wrought folly in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbours’ wives, and have spoken words in my name falsely, which I commanded them not; and I am he that knoweth, and am witness, saith the LORD.

24,25. And concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite thou shalt speak, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, Because thou hast sent letters in thine own name unto all the people that are at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest,

26 and to all the priests, saying, The LORD hath made thee priest in the stead of Jehoiada the priest, that ye should be officers in the house of the LORD, for every man that is mad, and

27 maketh himself a prophet, that thou shouldest put him in the stocks and in shackles. Now therefore, why hast thou not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth, which maketh himself a prophet

28 to you, forasmuch as he hath sent unto us in Babylon, saying, The captivity is long: build

29 ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them? And Zepha-

30 niah the priest read this letter in the ears of Jeremiah the prophet. Then came the word of

31 the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, Send to all them of the captivity, saying, Thus saith the LORD concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite: Because that Shemaiah hath prophesied unto

32 you, and I sent him not, and he hath caused you to trust in a lie; therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite, and his seed; he shall not have a man to dwell among this people, neither shall he behold the good that I will do unto my people, saith the LORD: because he hath spoken rebellion against the LORD.

Chap. 29. According to the proper arrangement, this chapter appears to follow the 24th; being the second of those which were delivered in the early part of Zedekiah’s reign. (See the note at the beginning of chap. 24.) Some embarrassment and incoherence are to be perceived in particular parts of this chapter, which are removed by transposing verse 15 and placing it immediately before verse 21, where it stands in the version of the Septuagint. By this emendation a due order and connection is restored both in the place from whence the verse is removed and in that to which it is restored.

This chapter contains the substance of two letters written at different times, as is evident from comparing verse 28 with verses 4, 5; although the title at the beginning announces only one, and there is no mark of distinction to be found afterward. The distinction, however, is certainly to be made at the end of verse 20. For in the first letter the prophet exhorts the captives to accommodate themselves to their present circumstances, under an assurance that their captivity would last to the end of seventy years, after which period, and not before, God would visit and restore them. And to prevent their listening to any false suggestions that might flatter them with hopes of a speedy return, he informs them of what would happen to their brethren that were left behind at Jerusalem, for whom a harder fate was reserved than for those that had been carried away. After this, finding, as it should seem, upon the return of the messengers, the little credit his first message had met with, he sends a second to the same persons, denouncing the Divine judgments against three of their false prophets, by whose influence chiefly the people had been prevented from hearkening to his good advice. Blayney.

The second letter by Jeremiah followed the first with no long interval. This letter shows that the Lord made use of Jeremiah in His spiritual care and culture, not only of the people remaining in Judea, but of those who were taken into captivity as well. The sympathies of the prophet were strongly with those captives. In his policy he warmly approved of their giving themselves up to the king of Babylon. He knew that God had repeatedly promised good to those who should do this, and that He depended on those captives to preserve His word and name among His people, and purposed to take from among them His choice seed for replanting the land of promise, and re-establishing the institutions of religion there. Hence He entered warmly into the spirit of this interesting correspondence. It is not clear that Jeremiah ever went to Babylon to labor with his captive brethren there in person. The next thing to a personal visit—a kind, fraternal epistle—he could give them, and did. Of his mission to the Euphrates, referred to in chap. 13:1-7, nothing further is known, save that briefest possible notice. H. C.

1. To the prophets.** Ezekiel and Daniel were then in captivity—Daniel in Babylon, and Ezekiel in Mesopotamia, on the river Chebar. Ezekiel did not begin prophesying till the fifth year of the captivity of Jeconiah; but Daniel was already acknowledged as a prophet of the Lord. There were probably other prophets also in that country, to whom Jeremiah addresses this letter; nor is it at all singular, that one prophet should advise and instruct others. David received instructions from Nathan; and Peter informs us that the prophets applied themselves to the study of the writings of the more ancient prophets. Daniel read and studied Jeremiah. The Chaldee, under the name of “prophets,” understands the scribes, or doctors of the law; the LXX translate the Hebrew by “false prophets.” Calmet.

1-3. “The remnant of the elders” are named specially and first among the parties addressed, because they have all along been the most hopeful class. If the reader will bear in mind, that falling back to a point twelve years before the captivity of Jehoiachin, we come to the death of Josiah, and that his great reformation commenced in his twelfth year, while his death occurred in his thirty-first, he will see that those nineteen years of reformation would lie within the active life of the elders here addressed. Might not these words of the prophet stir up in their hearts precious reminiscences of those better days? The reader will find this captivity of Jeconiah and others historically recorded in 2 K. 24:12-16; 2 Chron. 36:10, and referred to in Jer. 22:26; 28:4.

4-6. Let them by all means keep their eye on the hand and purpose of God in their captivity, and so the more patiently bear their privations and wait in hope for the good which lies at the end of all the Lord’s great purposes. This point having been suggested, the Lord directs them to make their homes there, to surround themselves as they might be able with the comforts of life, and raise up families so that they should be not diminished, but rather increased, because better times would surely come for their children to enjoy and to fill with their earnest and useful activities. H. C.

How to make the best of adversity. Jeremiah advises the captives in Babylon to take a course that is eminently brave and wise. The first ininclination would be to stir up a useless revolt, the second to sit down in sullen despondency. When trouble overcomes us we are tempted to follow one or other of these courses—to rebel or to despair. Jeremiah teaches us, as he taught the Jews of his day, that neither is right. He indicates a better way. Submit patiently to inevitable adversity. Seek the brightest course under the darkest circumstances. The captives could not return home. They were not, therefore, to treat the land of their exile as a hopeless desert, but to build and plant and eat the fruit of it. Cherish hopes for the future under the most trying present circumstances. The Jews were to remember the promise of the restoration. They were not to allow their race to die out (verse 6). A great future was still before them. History has confirmed the prediction of the prophets. The scattered and ruined people were recalled to their homes. From the stock of the despondent exiles there sprang not only all that was great and good in later Jewish history, but also Jesus Christ and Christianity. In our darkest moments we should not forget that, though not a ray of light has yet appeared on the horizon, the sun will surely rise and the day return. Christianity is peculiarly a religion of the future; it encourages us to press forward to the golden age which is yet to come. Adency.

7. It behoved them so to pray and labor for the good of even proud Babylon, that their spirit and life should adorn the religion of the God of their fathers. So they would make their life both useful and pleasant while they remained there, and would hopefully prepare the way for returning to their own more loved home, in the land made sacred by ancient promise and by their fathers’ graves. H. C.

God assures His people that Babylon’s peace is their peace. This sets before us a principle of action which Christian people cannot too diligently observe. While it is true that we are not of this world, but must constantly rise superior to its habits and maxims, yet at the same time we cannot do too much to maintain the stability of governments and the public order of the land in which we live. While the Spirit of God promotes the highest individuality, He also promotes the greatest order (1 Tim. 2:1-4). Y.

“In the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” All parts of the social system are so linked together by a law of mutual dependence and influence that the well-being of one is, in a measure, the well-being of all. “The eye cannot say to the hand," etc. ; “Whether one member suffer,” etc. We are all personally affected for good or ill by the political order and the general tone of the moral life around us. There are deep rankling wounds in the body politic—ignorance, drunkenness, roving beggary, domestic vice and violence, the systematic training of the young in crime, the oppression of the hireling in his wages, etc.—which it is to the interest of us all most earnestly to seek to heal. No class of the community can escape the ill effect of these things, and religion does but bring us into the deeper sympathy with those who most suffer by such forms of wrong. And we are bound to live for the world’s highest benefit. “Seek the peace of the city, and pray to the Lord for it.” Real peace is the fruit of righteousness. There can be none while the Divine order is violated and the Divine will set at nought. The Gospel is in every way God’s message of peace to the world. The Church is called to be the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth,” as a witness for God’s truth and righteousness. The Christian philanthropist alone has in his hands a thorough cure for the diseases and wounds of our humanity; and of all the weapons he can wield in his conflict with them, none so mighty as prayer, inasmuch as that unseals the fount of all blessing, and brings down from heaven the healing, saving power. Well may a Christian apostle enlarge and emphasize the old prophetic message, saying, “I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). W.

Thus the primitive Christians, according to the temper of their holy religion, prayed for the powers that were, though they were persecuting powers. And if they were to pray for and seek the peace of the land of their captivity, much more reason have we to pray for the welfare of the land of our nativity, where we are a free people under a good government, that in the peace thereof we and ours may have peace. Every passenger is concerned in the safety of the ship. H.

8,9. Even far away in Babylon and among the better class of the Jews, the false prophets and vain dreamers were still a curse to the people, and it was needful that the Lord through Jeremiah should warn them of these men. H. C. 10. After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon. This prophecy was first delivered in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and the same year it began to be put in execution, seventy years from which time will bring us down to the first year of Cyrus, when he made proclamation for the restoration of the Jews, and the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem. If we fix the commencement of the seventy years at the time when Jerusalem was burned and destroyed, their conclusion will fall about the time when Darius issued his decree for rebuilding the Temple, after the work had been suspended. Or if we fix their commencement at the time when Nebuzaradan carried away the last remainder of the people, and completed the desolation of the land, their conclusion will fall about the time when the Temple was finished and dedicated, and the first passover was solemnized in it. “So that,” as Dean Prideaux says, “taking it which way you will, and at what stage you please, the prophecy of Jeremiah will be fully and exactly accomplished concerning this matter.” It may be said to have been accomplished at three different times and in three different manners; and therefore, possibly, all might have been intended, though the first, without doubt, was the principal object of the prophecy. Bp. Newton.

I will visit you. There were but few of these captives, in comparison, who returned in person to their own country. (See Ezra 3:12.) So this promise was chiefly fulfilled in their posterity; and it is common in Scripture to speak of blessings bestowed upon the children, as if they had been actually made good to their progenitors. W. Lowth.

10,11. It had been intimated in a somewhat indefinite way that the captivity would continue but seventy years (chap. 25:11, 12). The precise thing said there was that those nations, subdued by the king of Babylon, should serve him seventy years, and then the Lord would reverse those political relations and make Babylon the servant and other nations the masters. But here it is clearly said that after seventy years God would visit His people there and restore them to their own land. To confirm this to their wavering hearts, the Lord beautifully subjoins, “For I know My thoughts touching you, that they are thoughts of good and not of evil, to make your latter end hopeful and happy.” H. C. 11. Thoughts of peace. Such is the consoling word that God sends to His “banished ones” in their affliction. He bids His servant “speak comfortably” to them, even now that their “warfare” is only beginning, and they are having their first taste of the bitterness of exile. Blending with the lamentations of the weeping captives as they “hung their harps on the willows by the waters of Babylon,” we can imagine that this gracious word would have a more salutary effect upon them than the living voice of the prophet ever had. W.

12,13. But these great blessings can come only through prayerfully seeking the face of God and finding mercy before Him. The blessedness of this captivity would lie in its thoroughly uprooting their idolatry, emptying their souls of all self-righteous reliance on the forms of religion, and in casting them only and wholly upon the Lord their God. Thus self-emptied, consciously guilty and needy, they would seek after God. At this point He gave them His promise to hear and to save. Beautifully the Lord expands these cardinal ideas in respect to what constitutes successful seeking: “Ye shall seek and find when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.” When they were deeply and solemnly in earnest, when they could think of nothing else, when their whole souls were absorbed in the one supreme desire to find God—then, so seeking, they would surely find. To such seeking God gives His promise, but to no other sort of seeking, to no seeking which enlists but half the heart, to no seeking which but slightly moves the sensibility, or which inspires effort only now and then, spasmodically. The illustrations given to the same point by our Divine Lord in such cases as blind Bartimeus, the Syrophenician woman, and the prodigal son, develop the same quenchless zeal, the same determined purpose, the same intense, all-absorbing interest and devotion. Precisely this is searching for the Lord with all the heart. It is the only way of seeking God so as to find Him. God has a right to demand both honesty and sincerity; and He does. He has a right to suspend the blessings of His mercy upon this sole condition, that they shall be sought with all the heart. He does so. H. C.

12. Ye shall call upon Me, ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.** The Lord’s ear is inclined to hear the prayer of the godly. He takes it well that they offer it up as due worship to Him; that they desire thus to serve Him. He accepts of those offerings graciously, passes by the imperfections in them, and hath regard to their sincere intention and desire. It pleases Him well, that they delight in prayer as converse with Him; that they love to be much with Him, to speak to Him often, and still aspire by this way to more acquaintance with Him. He willingly hears their prayers as the expressions of their necessities and desires, being both rich and bountiful; He loves to have blessings drawn out of His hands that way. Leighton.

Genuine prayer is passing by and putting aside all legal and official conceptions of God, and coming face to face with Him as Father, Friend and Helper. It does not leave out of thought the conception of His kingdom, the holy and beneficent order of His universe. It cries out for it. But it begins with His name, His personality. It takes the gifts that that order brings as the daily bread from a Father’s hand. It cries for His forgiveness of the sins which have come between us and Him, and pleads to that end that we have been forgiving and loving toward our brethren. It cries for His wise guidance through a world of temptations, where every step we take seems to be determined by inevitable law. S. S. T.

Prayer is the expression of our wants to God as our Father. Too many pray as criminals deprecating the wrath of a judge, instead of praying as children asking the blessing of our Father who is in heaven. The first model prayer taught us is, “Our Father which art in heaven;” and the less of deprecation and the more filial confidence in our prayers, the more we exhibit the characteristic spirit of the Gospel of Christ. But when all is deep and earnest deprecation of wrath, without one single expression of filial trust, such a litany or prayer sounds more like the wail of despair than the hopeful cry of the still beloved, though long a prodigal son, seeking bread from his father’s stores, and a shelter under his father’s roof-tree. For what did the prodigal say, at his greatest distance from home, in the depth and bitterness of his worst estrangement? “I will arise and go to my father.” That was the last lingering tie or link within him, and that thought thrilled, in blessed vibrations, through his soul, awakened in his lonely heart all the music of the blessed, and made him arise, and with delighted hopes go to his father, and seek—what he found there—a blessing, and bread, and a joyous welcome. Cumming.

What is prayer for? Not to inform God nor to move Him, unwilling, to have mercy, as if, like some proud prince, He required a certain amount of recognition of His greatness as the price of His favors. But to fit our own hearts by conscious need, and true desire and dependence, to receive the gifts which He is ever willing to give, but we are not always fit to receive. As Augustine has it, the empty vessel is by prayer carried to the full fountain. A. M.

As faith is the one great principle of the spiritual life, so is prayer its one great exercise. And though prayer is a very simple thing, and it is perfectly easy to grasp the idea of going to God for what we want, and telling out before Him the desires of our hearts, all experience teaches that prayer—at all events, stated and continuous prayer—is very difficult to practise. The true policy in spiritual things always is to endeavor, and to go on endeavoring, after that which we feel quite unequal to do. Where you cannot pray as you wish, pray at all events as you can, and make more vigorous endeavor. If you are troubled and rebuffed by distractions in your prayer, pray on; “stretch forth thy hand” at the gate of mercy, till something is put into it from above. E. M. G.

The pattern of prayer taught by Christ teaches that true prayer is a child’s voice to its Father; that it puts God’s glory first and ourselves second; that the deepest desire should be for the hallowing in men’s hearts and thoughts of the revealed character of God, which will bring His kingdom; that, for ourselves, our outward wants should be the lowest subject of prayer, and our desires be limited within modest compass; that forgiveness is our universal and daily need, and cannot be given to the unmerciful; and that, after pardon, we ever need guarding, lest we fall. A. M.

“No answer to prayer” must ever be written over the petitions of all who, having asked, expect that all is done. Even if the thing asked is all and altogether beyond the range of what we ourselves could bring about, nevertheless we may have an all-important part in the answering of our requests. No one can tell what little thing, wrought in answering obedience to God’s call, may fashion itself into the events that are to combine in unity to make our answered prayer, or that may fit us for the reception of the answer. For it is as true that we need the preparation for the answer to our prayers as it is that we need to pray at all. All praying has a place, a most real place, in the economy of God, as He shapes us after His image and likeness as the clay is fashioned by the hands of the potter. Perhaps it is here that more prayers are awaiting an answer, and so are at present unanswered for individual souls, than almost anywhere else; for the preparation within for the answer, and the moving out which has in it the willingness to do all that God gives us to do, to make the answer to the prayer easy and present and practically possible. It may be that God is going to heal with a word, but it is much more likely that He will call upon us in all natural and spiritual ways to have some part in the healing, and men must not complain that prayer is not answered who are not up and about the work God appoints for them. One way and only one makes possible no prayers unanswered, that we seek only God, God Himself; then everywhere, on the right hand and the left, on sea or land, we can never miss the answer to all our desire, for God is in all places, and neither height, nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Anon.

13. Ye shall seek Me and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.** Religious character is more than mere natural character, and different from it, as what we are by constitution is different from what we do, and practically seek, and freely become. It is that which lies in choice, and for which we are thus responsible. It is made by what the soul’s liberty goes after with a reigning devotion, what it chooses and lives for as its end. If the man, therefore, lives for himself or for the world, as all men do in the way of sin, he is without God, without religious character, and is all the more guilty in it that his nature is feeling after God in throes of disappointed longing. A man is never in religious character till he has found God; and he will never find Him till his whole voluntary nature goes after Him, and chimes with Him in His principles and ends. Whatever ends he has had of his own must be given up as being his own, and God’s must be enthroned in him by a supreme devotion. “Ye shall seek for Me and find Me, if ye search for Me with all your heart.” Bushnell.

In seeking God, we must search for Him, accomplish a diligent search, search for directions in seeking Him and encouragements to our faith and hope. We must continue seeking, and take pains in seeking as those that search; and this we must do with our heart, in sincerity and uprightness, and with our whole heart, with vigor and fervency, putting forth all that is within us in prayer; those who thus seek God shall find Him, and shall find Him their bountiful Rewarder (Heb. 11:6). He never said to such, Seek ye Me in vain. H.

Our lives are determined by our practical theology, our working knowledge of or our common feeling about God. The life is never better than the heart’s secret thought of God. True love makes straight paths from heart to heart. Who truly loves must seek, as the neodle does the magnet point. “And ye shall find Me.” Ah, what a discovery is that! Men count those fortunate who discover a gold-mine, who discover a continent, who discover a law in nature, who discover a new star calmly sweeping through space—but what is that to him who discovers God! Interior.

God must have the heart or nothing, and have its direct loyalty and love, or none that is accepted. He looks in to see which way the inmost spirit kneels—and not Sunday only, but all days—whether toward the Father of Righteousness or some idol of the popular admiration. He lifts the folds that are plaited so cunningly over our inmost selves, and judges what that inner rule is by which we refuse or accept bribes from the hand of man or woman, by which we do or scorn to do an unclean deed. So that, in reality, the difference between seeking God and seeking Him not is something more than a relative or comparative difference. It is absolute and decisive. It supposes a distinct centre of attraction, and so another sort of life; what the New Testament calls a “new man.” F. D. H.

He seeks us before we seek Him. Our search is the response of our hearts to His invitation (Ps. 27:8). But this search must be made. The promise of finding is attached to the condition of seeking (Matt. 7:7). The prodigal must return to his father before he can receive the welcome home. Men are waiting for God to visit them, reveal Himself to them, do something that will bring them back to Him. They may wait forever and in vain. God is waiting for us. It is our part to arise and seek Him. This search must be with all the heart. The reason why we are disappointed of the answers of our prayers is often that our prayers are so insincere, so cold, so half-hearted. It is reasonable to expect God, the all-seeing, to answer our prayers, not according to the vigor of the language, but according to the fervency of our desires. If we value the knowledge and communion of God aright, we shall seek Him with all the heart; with the heart—i.e., sincerely, spiritually, inwardly, not with mere formal inquiries; and with the whole heart—i.e., with singleness of purpose, intensity, earnestness. “Blessed are they that seek God with all the heart, for they shall find Him;” that is enough for a perfect beatitude. To find God is to find our light, our rest, our home. To know Him is life eternal; to commune with Him is the joy of heaven. Adeney.

15. Because ye have said. The Septuagint properly inserts this verse between the twentieth and the twenty-first, and thus the connection here is not disturbed, and the connection below completed. A. C.

20-23. From general remarks about the false prophets, Jeremiah here becomes specific; names two of these false prophets, probably the leaders; details their case and announces their terrible doom. When people wished to imprecate the direst curses on the worst of men, they might say, “The Lord make thee like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king roasted in the fire.” Their crimes included both the most flagrant immoralities and the most shocking blasphemy in their work as false prophets. H. C.

20. Hear ye therefore the word. Dr. Blayney thinks there were two letters written by the prophet to the captives in Babylon, and that the first ends with this verse. That having heard, on the return of the embassy (Elasah and Gemariah, whom Zedekiah had sent to Babylon, and to whom the prophet entrusted the above letter—verse 3), that the captives had not received his advices favorably, because they were deceived by false prophets among them, who promised them a speedier deliverance, he therefore wrote a second letter, beginning with the fifteenth verse, and going on with the twenty-first, etc., in which he denounces God’s judgments on three of the chief of those—Ahab, Zedekiah and Shemaiah.

21. He shall slay them before your eyes. Nebuchadnezzar would be led by political reasons to punish these pretended prophets, as their predictions tended to make his Israelitish subjects uneasy and disaffected; and might excite them to rebellion. He therefore slew them; two of them it appears he burned alive—viz., Ahab and Zedekiah. Burning alive was a Chaldean punishment (Dan. 3:6; Amos 2:1). From them other nations borrowed it. A. C.

24. Speak to Shemaiah. Zephaniah was the second priest, sagan, or chief priest’s deputy; and Seraiah, high-priest, when Jerusalem was taken. (See chap. 52:24.) Shemaiah directs his letter to the former, and tells him that God had appointed him to supply the place of the high-priest, who was probably then absent. His name was either Azariah, or Seraiah, his son, but called Jehoiada from the remarkable zeal and courage of that pontiff. (See the passages in the margin.) Dodd.

24-29. Another of those false prophets among the captives at Babylon, Shemaiah by name, did not like the command sent out by the hand of Jeremiah, “Build ye houses and make yourselves homes and families there in