Jeremiah 29

29:1-23 Jeremiah contacted the Hebrew exiles in Babylon by letter. To reach all the scattered Israelites, his letter would be read repeatedly from settlement to settlement.

29:2 had been deported from Jerusalem: This refers to the exile of 597 BC.

29:5-7 Jeremiah urged the exiled people to plan to stay in Babylon for a long time. God wanted them to become productive citizens, concerned and praying to the Lord for the welfare of the Babylonian communities in which they lived, so their population could grow. They should not listen to false prophecies such as Hananiah’s, promising that they would be coming home shortly.

29:8-9 The next divine command warned against false prophets and fortune-tellers.

29:10 The exiled people of Judah would be in Babylon for seventy years; this was not new information (see 25:11), but Jeremiah’s audiences in Jerusalem had not believed him. Now that those people were in exile, they needed to accept reality.

29:11 The Lord’s plans for good, to prosper the exiled people and to return them to the land of Judah, gave them a future and a hope. This promise was specific to the exiles in Babylon, but it has given hope to millions of God’s people in various difficult circumstances.

29:12-13 Through Jeremiah, the Lord reminded the exiled people that if they would look for him wholeheartedly, they would find him. The Exile taught the Israelites to reject false gods and give their wholehearted devotion to the Lord (Deut 6:4-6). It also gave them a new commitment to the revealed word of God.

29:15 False prophets could still be found among the exiles; they held out hope for the survival of Jerusalem and a quick end to the Exile.

29:16-18 To keep the exiles in Babylon from thinking that they were worse off than those left behind, the Lord reiterated his decree of disaster for the bad figs still in Jerusalem (see 24:6-10); their time of horror was yet to come.

29:20-22 Although Jeremiah was in Jerusalem, God was able to tell him what was happening in Babylon, just as he was able to tell Ezekiel in Babylon what was happening in Jerusalem (Ezek 8). • The Lord named two prophets who were telling . . . lies in his name, and sentenced them to death (Deut 18:20-22; cp. Jer 26:14-15; 28:16-17).

29:24-32 A prophet in Babylon named Shemaiah took issue with Jeremiah’s written advice that the exiles should accept a long exile (29:4-23). Shemaiah sent a letter to a leading priest in Jerusalem, urging him to take action against Jeremiah; Jeremiah responded with a letter to the exiles that condemned Shemaiah.

29:29 Zephaniah had enough good sense to show Jeremiah the letter from Shemaiah.

29:30-32 Since Shemaiah had no commission from the Lord, he was a liar; he tried to persuade the exiles to believe in a brief exile. With a threefold invocation of the Lord’s authority (see study note on 2:2), Shemaiah was charged, convicted, and sentenced to execution.