Jeremiah 29

Jeremiah writes to deported Jews

Dear Israelites in exile

1Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar deported people from Jerusalem, exiling them to Babylon. [1] He took leading citizens including priests and prophets. Jeremiah wrote to those exiled people. 2Captives also included King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the king's officials, other leaders of Judah, along with artisans and smiths.

3Jeremiah sent his letter with two of the king's representatives. They were getting ready to go to Babylon to meet with King Nebuchadnezzar. The men were Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah. Here’s what the letter said:

4This message is from the LORD of everyone and the God of Israel. It’s for everyone exiled from Jerusalem and sent to Babylon. 5Go ahead and settle in this new land. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and enjoy eating what you grow. 6Get married have a lot of children. Then let your sons and daughters get married when the time comes. Grow your family while you’re there. Don't shrink the numbers, push them higher. 7Support the city where you live. Do what you can to help it prosper. Ask God to help the city and its people as well. When you help your town, you'll be helping yourself.

Don’t listen to fake prophets

8The LORD of everyone and the God of Israel also says this: Don't let the prophets and the fortune tellers trick you into believing their fake dreams. Don't pay any attention to what they say about those dreams. 9They are lying when they tell you they are prophesying messages I gave them. I haven't said anything to them.

10You are going to have to wait for the 70 years [2] of exile to finish before I will do what I promised and bring you back home to this land. 11It doesn't end here for you. I have plans for your future—plans to help you not to hurt you. So hang onto your hope.

God: When you call, I’ll hear

12When you call for me, I’ll hear you. 13When you look for me, you’ll find me. Look hard, with all your heart. 14When you find me, I’ll lead you home to the land from which you were driven and scattered among the nations. And I’ll restore what this exile has taken from you.

15I know you’ve been bragging and saying “The LORD has given us prophets here in Babylon.” 16Well, let me tell you what I’m giving you. I’m giving something to everyone spared from exile—and that includes the king from David’s family and everyone else. 17I’m the LORD of everyone and I’m giving them death by sword, famine, and disease. What’s left of them will be as repulsive as a sack of rotten figs.

18I’ll hunt them down and drop them with swords, drought, and disease. Other nations will watch in horror at what I do to the people. Survivors will become the butt of jokes and target of insults wherever they go. 19I’ll do this because they continually ignored and rejected my messengers. I sent prophet after prophet. Yet the people refused to do what I told them.

Two men roasted

20Now for those of you I exiled from Jerusalem and sent to Babylon, listen to me. 21This is coming from the LORD of everyone and the God of Israel. And it concerns two lying prophets: Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah. They say I’m sending them messages. Well, here’s a message. King Nebuchadnezzar will arrest them and execute them in front of you.

22Their deaths will inspire a curse that you people in Babylon will use when you’re talking about someone you don’t like: “May you die like Zedekiah and Ahab, slow roasted.” 23They’re paying the price for their repulsive lives. These men have been having sex with their neighbor’s wives. And they spread lies and attribute them to me. I saw it and I know what I saw.

Bad guy prophet Shemaiah

24This message is for Shemaiah of Nehelam. [3] 25From the LORD of everyone and the God of Israel:

You wrote letters to leaders in Jerusalem, including the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah and all the other priests. 26You told them that I, the LORD, promoted Zephaniah to take the place of Jehoiada, the Temple security priest who recently died. Then you told Zephaniah that his job was to have the Temple security officers arrest crazy men who run around pretending to be prophets.

27And you added, “Why haven’t you arrested Jeremiah from the town of Anathoth? 28When that guy told us goodbye before we left for exile, he said we’re in it for the long haul, so we might as well build houses, plant gardens, and eat what we grow.”

29Jerusalem’s priest read that letter in front of Jeremiah. 30Right away the LORD gave Jeremiah a response: 31Send this message to all the people exiled in Babylon:

Shemaiah of Nehelam convinced you to believe the prophecies that he said came from me. They didn’t. 32I'm going to punish him for this. No one in his family will live to see the good things I’ll do for these people who are exiled. He turned against me and became my enemy.

Footnotes

Intro Notes to Jeremiah

129:1

Babylonians deported the people of Judah three times. This exile refers to the first one, in 597 BC. That’s when Babylonians took treasures from the Temple along with Judah’s top leaders. About a decade later, Babylonians effectively erased the Jewish nation from the world map, in 586 BC.

229:10

Jeremiah 25:11.

329:24

Both the man Shemaiah and the place Nehelam remain a mystery. Location of Nehelam is uncertain. Some scholars say they wonder if Nehelam/Nahlam is a variation of the word halam, which means “to dream.” If so, Jeremiah may have been insulting him with some sarcasm: Shemaiah the Dreamer. Prophets often got their messages from God in vivid dreams, called “visions of the night.”