Jeremiah 52: True or False?
Notes
Transcript
Review of Jeremiah
Review of Jeremiah
Today we conclude the book of Jeremiah. And we are left with some interesting questions and conclusions. Was Jeremiah a true prophet? Did everything he say come to pass? If so, how so? If not, why not?
The last words of Jeremiah 51:64 are “Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.” Therefore almost all scholars agree that Jeremiah 52 is an Epilogue that was written by another editor. This scribe, maybe Baruch, or maybe Seraiah, provides evidence of the fulfillment of some of what Jeremiah had spoken.
Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. And he did what was evil in Adonai’s eyes, just like all Jehoiakim had done. Because of Adonai’s anger it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that He had them cast out of His presence. So Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. It came to pass in the ninth year of his reign in the tenth month, the tenth day of the month, that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came—he and all his army—against Jerusalem, and besieged it. They built a siege wall all around it. So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. In the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the famine was so severe in the city, that there was no food for the people of the land. Then the city was broken into, and all the men of war fled, going out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was near the king’s garden—even though the Chaldeans were all around the city. They were heading along the way of the Arabah. But the Chaldean army pursued the king and overtook Zedekiah in the desert plains of Jericho. Then all his army was scattered from him. Then they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath. He passed judgment on him. At Riblah, the king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah’s sons before his eyes, and also all the Judean leaders. Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes. Then the king of Babylon bound him in bronze chains, and brought him to Babylon, where he put him in prison until the day of his death. Now in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month—which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard came into Jerusalem to represent the king of Babylon. Then he burned the House of Adonai, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He burned every large house with fire. Then all the Chaldean army, which was with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls of Jerusalem all around. Then Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile some of the poorest of the people, the rest of the people who were left in the city, the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon, and what remained of the craftsmen. But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen. The Chaldeans smashed the bronze pillars of the House of Adonai, the stands and the bronze sea that were in the House of Adonai, and carried all the bronze to Babylon. The pots, the shovels, the wick trimmers, the basins, the pans, and all the bronze articles for Temple service, they also took away. The cups, the fire-pans, the basins, the pots, the menorot, the pans, and the drink offering bowls—whatever was gold or silver—the captain of the guard took away. As for the two pillars, one sea, and twelve bronze bulls that were under the stands that King Solomon had made for the House of Adonai—all these articles had bronze beyond weighing. The height of one pillar was 18 cubits and it was twelve cubits in circumference and four fingers in its thickness—it was hollow. There was a bronze capital on it—the height of one capital was five cubits, with latticework and pomegranates upon the capital all around, all of bronze. The second pillar was the same, with pomegranates. There were 96 pomegranates on the outside; including all the pomegranates around the lattice, there were 100. Then the captain of the guard took Seraiah the kohen gadol, and Zephaniah the second kohen, and the three doorkeepers. From the city he took an officer who had been appointed over the men of war as well as seven men who saw the king’s face, who were found in the city, the scribe of the commander of the army, who enlisted people of the land, and 60 men of the people of the land who were found within the city. Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard took them and brought them to the king of Babylon to Riblah. The king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Then Judah was led away into exile from its land. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away captive: in the seventh year 3,023 Jews; in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year, 832 people from Jerusalem; in the Nebuchadnezzar’s twenty-third year, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard exiled 745 of the Jews—all together 4,600 people. Now it came to pass on the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the captivity of Judah’s King Jehoiachin, that King Evil-merodach of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, lifted up the head of Judah’s King Jehoiachin, and released him out of prison. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon. Then he changed out of his prison garments, dined regularly before him all the days of his life. As for his allowance, a regular allowance was given to him by the king of Babylon, a portion for each day until the day of his death, all the days of his life.
Jeremiah’s Call to Ministry
Jeremiah’s Call to Ministry
When we began our study of Jeremiah, we were much younger… I mean he was a much younger man. :) His ministry began in his teens and spanned more than 40 years. Jeremiah witnessed a massive national revival under King Josiah, and yet he was called to point out that the heart of the people of Judah and Jerusalem had only superficially turned to Adonai. Remember how Adonai called him? Jer. 1:4-10
The word of Adonai came to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart— I appointed you prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Alas, Adonai Elohim! Look, I don’t know how to speak! For I’m still a boy!” But Adonai answered me, “Do not say ‘I’m only a boy!’ For to everyone I send you, you will go, and all I command you, you will speak. Do not be afraid of them! For I am with you to deliver you.” It is a declaration of Adonai. Then Adonai stretched out His hand and touched my mouth and Adonai said to me, “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, today I have appointed you over nations and over kingdoms: to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
Did Jeremiah have any idea at that time that his eyes would see the destruction of everything he held dear? He watched Judah get conquered three times, first by Pharoah Necho II and then twice by Nebuchadnezzar. He watched the fall of 5 Judean kings: Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. He watch the Temple burn, as well as his own home town of Anathoth in Benjamin. As you listen through the book of Lamentations, you can hear the broken heart of a man who loves his nation, but hates the sin, and is watching Adonai bring the just, and predetermined punishment upon his people, a punishment that had been prophesied by Moses in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
How does a man endure such devastation? How did Jeremiah survive? His heart broke so many times, Jer. 8:18-23
My joy is overcome by grief, my heart is faint within me. Listen, the sound of the cry of the daughter of my people —a voice from a distant land— “Is Adonai no longer in Zion? Is her King no longer in her?” “Why have they provoked Me with their graven images, with foreign idols?” “Harvest is past, summer is over, yet we are not saved.” “Because of the brokenness of the daughter of my people, I am brokenhearted. I mourn—desolation grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Then why has no healing gone up for the daughter of my people? If only my head were water and my eyes a fountain of tears, then I would weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Many times the words of the prophet intermingle with the words from Adonai and show the breaking heart of both. Why will the people of Judah not humble themselves and repent? But Jeremiah 5:3 “Adonai, … You struck them, but they did not grieve. You disciplined them, but they refused correction. They made their faces harder than stone. They refused to return [repent].”
70 Years of Exile
70 Years of Exile
Even after watching the nobility being exiled to Babylon, including Ezekiel, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, the remaining people preferred to listen to the false prophets and priests who had lied to them again and again.
Adonai then had to specifically tell the nation: Jer. 25:11
“So this whole land will be a desolate ruin, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for 70 years.
Jeremiah warns the people that the exile will not be over in a day, or a year, but 70 years.
Jeremiah sees the New Covenant
Jeremiah sees the New Covenant
And yet in the middle of all this pain, Jeremiah hears and speaks of the love that Adonai has for his people: Jer. 31:1-5
Thus says Adonai: “The people surviving the sword found grace in the wilderness— where I gave Israel rest.” “From afar Adonai appeared to me.” “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you, so you will be rebuilt, virgin Israel! Again you will take up your tambourines as ornaments, and go out to dances of merrymakers. Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria— planters will plant and use them. For there will be a day when watchmen will call out in the hill country of Ephraim, ‘Arise, let us go up to Zion, to Adonai our God.’ ”
Adonai promises that He will save His people and bring them back to his land. And they will come with singing and weeping and prayer, Jer. 31:9
Hear the word of Adonai, O nations, and declare it in the distant islands, and say: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather and watch over him, as a shepherd does his flock.’
Because in the future Israel will repent and return, Jer. 31:17-18
I indeed heard Ephraim grieving: ‘You have disciplined me— I was disciplined like an untrained calf. Restore me, and I will return, for you are Adonai my God. For after I returned, I repented, and after that I was instructed, I struck my thigh— I was ashamed and also humiliated, for I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
And at this future appointed time, atime of repentance, Jeremiah sees a future comfort coming in the form of a New Covenant with Judah and Israel. Jer. 31:30-36
“Behold, days are coming” —it is a declaration of Adonai— “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them.” it is a declaration of Adonai. “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days” —it is a declaration of Adonai— “I will put My Torah within them. Yes, I will write it on their heart. I will be their God and they will be My people. No longer will each teach his neighbor or each his brother, saying: ‘Know Adonai,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest.” it is a declaration of Adonai. “For I will forgive their iniquity, their sin I will remember no more.” Thus says Adonai, who gives the sun as a light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars as a light by night, who stirs up the sea so its waves roar, Adonai-Tzva’ot is His Name: “Only if this fixed order departs from before Me” —it is a declaration of Adonai— “then also might Israel’s offspring cease from being a nation before Me—for all time.” Thus says Adonai: “Only if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then also I will cast off the offspring of Israel—for all they have done.” It is a declaration of Adonai.
Application: True or False?
Application: True or False?
So when we look at the words of Jeremiah, were they true or false? Did they come to pass or not? Well, yes and no. We see that Judah was indeed judged by Babylon from the North, and judgement came upon Jerusalem for 70 years just as Jeremiah had spoken.
But what about the return from exile? Well, one scholar, Samuel Rolles Driver states of Jeremiah:
Not only does he promise what actually came to pass: the return of the exiles to the territories of Benjamin and Judah, and the resumption there or the interrupted social state, in which again, as of old, the sounds of joy and life would be heard in the villages, shepherds would again tend their flocks, and houses and fields would again be bought and sold by the restored exiles; but he invests the future with ideal colours. … The restored nation is pictures as returning to [Adonai] “with it[s] whole heart”.
Driver then concludes:
It must be evident that many of these promises have not been fulfilled, and that now circumstances have so changes that they never can be fulfilled; but, like the similar pictures drawn by the other prophets, they remain as inspiring ideals of the future which God would fain see realized by or for His people, and the goal which man, with God’s help, should strive to attain.
Now why would Samuel Driver say this? Well firstly, he lived from 1846 to 1914. What had not happened by the time he died? WW1, WW2, and more specifically the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1946. But what Driver recognized was that many of the prophesies of Jeremiah had not completely come to pass, or they had not come to pass in the time fame that Jeremiah might have expected them to, nor with the glory that Jeremiah envisioned. When Israel returned from Babylon (part of the Medo-Persian empire as is was by then) it was not as glorious as Jeremiah seems to describe. Only about 50,000 people returned with Ezra and Nehemiah, the Second Temple was not as glorious as the Temple of Solomon, and Micah and Zechariah had to constantly get on the people for their sinful actions that continued post-exile.
When we look at the judgments again Babylon, or the other nations, we also see that they were not as devastating as Jeremiah seemed to prophesy. Or at least not for a very long time. For instance, when Cyrus conquered Babylon, he did so almost without a shot fired. Another commentator, John Bright, points out:
It is to be noted that the actual fate of Babylon at the hands of Cyrus could scarcely have been more unlike the awful picture of slaughter and destruction that we see in these poems [Jer. 50-51] Cyrus actually entered Babylon without a fight, refrained from harming it in any way, and treated the citizens with the utmost consideration.” [Therefore] it is unthinkable that a prophesy such as the present one could have been composed after the event.
Picture
Although John is pointing out that Jeremiah must have written the prophesy before the events, the reason that he says this, is that the events do not seem to match the devastation described. So what do we do with that? Was Babylon destroyed as Jeremiah predicted? Well yes. Bright continues:
The population of Babylon was forcibly moved to Seleucia, and Babylon became no more than an archaic sacred site. By the first century BC, its desolation was complete.
Now it is true that sometimes when a prophet sees a scenario that the are not aware of how much time is supposed to be between the events. For instance, Jeremiah spoke of the return of the Jewish people from exile after 70 years, but he was not shown that the New Covenant, as instituted by Yeshua, would be over 413 years later. That information was actually given to Daniel in Babylon who never spoke to Jeremiah.
So there is a concept called Theoreo, which means: “to understand, conceived of as seeing; to behold, to see with attention; or to experience something, conceived of as being present during the experience so as to view it.”
The best way to explain it is to show an example:
But is that enough? Michael Brown concludes his commentary by saying this:
The conclusion must be that in some cases the reputation of the prophet established the truthfulness of his words (rather than the truthfulness of his words established his reputation). So because Jeremiah, who was a proven prophet, declared that his messages concerning Babylon’s demise were the very words of God, later generations of believers automatically concurred with that assessment, and all the more so once these writings took their place as recognized, sacred texts.
From Trusting Jeremiah to Trusting Yeshua
From Trusting Jeremiah to Trusting Yeshua
Over the last year I have gotten to know Jeremiah, his heart, is faithfulness and his relationship with Adonai. There is a blessing that we pray for the Haftarah that goes like this:
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has chosen good prophets and wasplease with their words that were uttered with truth . Blessed are You, Adonai, who chooses the Torah and Moses, God’s servant, and Israel, God’s people, and the prophets of truth and righteousness.
We have seen that many of Jeremiah’s words have come to pass exactly as he said. We have seen that Jeremiah was faithful to Adonai in the middle of extremely difficult circumstances, when the whole world seemed to be against him. Jeremiah was faithful to speak what no one wanted to her, therefore when Jeremiah was entrusted with the promise of the New Covenant, we recognize that this is a faithful promise of Adonai.
So when Yeshua spoke of the New Covenant, we know exactly what he was referring to. Lk. 22:14-20
When the hour came, Yeshua reclined at table, and the emissaries with Him. And He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will never eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And when He had taken a cup and offered the bracha, He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I tell you that I will never drink of the fruit of the vine from now on, until the kingdom of God comes.” And when He had taken matzah and offered the bracha, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body, given for you. Do this in memory of Me.” In the same way, He took the cup after the meal, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.
And again the author of Hebrews point to the New Covenant that Yeshua has established in Heb. 9:11-15
But when Messiah appeared as Kohen Gadol of the good things that have now come, passing through the greater and more perfect Tent not made with hands (that is to say not of this creation), He entered into the Holies once for all—not by the blood of goats and calves but by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Messiah—who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God—cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, in order that those called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—since a death has taken place that redeems them from violations under the first covenant.
And just as with the New Covenant, we can also expect all of the prophesies of Jeremiah to be completely and exactly fulfilled. Because unlike Samuel Driver, we have the advantage of seeing the promise of Adonai fulfilled with regards to the re-establishment of Israel as a nation, the re-establishment of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the resurrection of that valley of dry bones into a mighty army!
So we can be assured that Adonai will watch His word to perform it. He who watches Israel, neither slumbers nor sleeps.