Jeremiah 44
God: Judah will die in Egypt
Judah, new wasteland of ruins
1God gave Jeremiah a message for the people of Judah living in the Egyptian cities of Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and in the south region known as Pathros. [1] 2The LORD of everyone and the God of Israel says:You saw the disaster I inflicted on Jerusalem and on towns throughout Judah. When you look at Judah today, all you see is desolation and ruins. No one lives there anymore. 3I did this to punish the wicked people there. They provoked me by worshipping gods they and their ancestors had never heard of. It made me angry. 4I sent my prophets—one after another—to warn them. They delivered the same basic message: “Stop doing this terrible thing that the LORD hates!”
5People didn't listen. They weren't interested. They kept offering sacrifices to other gods.
God empties his wrath
6So I dumped my wrath on the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. It’s all a wasteland now, desolation.7Why do you keep hurting yourselves? That’s what you’re doing by severing your connection to the land of Judah. You’ve taken all the people who were left behind—women, children, and babies. Now there’s no one among your people left in Judah. [2]
8After all you've seen, why do you continue to provoke me? Why do you keep offering sacrifices to Egyptian gods? Will you end up destroying yourselves and earning a reputation as the people who deserve nothing but insults? 9Are you incapable of learning from your history? Have you already forgotten the crimes of your ancestors and of your kings and their wives. And what about your own crimes and those of your wives? Have you forgotten all this history of Judah and Jerusalem?
10You show no regret for what you've done. You know what I've said you should do. Yet you refuse to do it. The laws I have given you are ancient laws that date back to your early ancestors. Yet you ignore them.
God promises to hit them hard
11So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to deliver disaster to your door. I am going to put an end to Judah. 12Every one of you leftovers of Judah who has come into this land will die here. Egypt will fall. Famine and war will tear it down. Everyone from the least known to the king himself will suffer the horrors, the insults, and the ridicule. Then they’ll die of starvation or by the sword.13I'm going to punish the people of Judah who have moved to Egypt just as I did the people in Jerusalem. They’ll die by the sword, starvation, and disease. 14Judeans in Egypt who were left behind by Babylon will never return to Judah. They’ll miss home and want to go back. But I won't let them, except for a few fugitives who will escape.”
Judeans tell Jeremiah “Who cares?”
15People of Judah responded to Jeremiah. These people included men who knew their wives were sacrificing to other gods. There was a crowd of women, too. And there were also a lot of people who had come from the Pathros territory down south.16They said, “Who cares? We’re not going to take anything you said seriously. 17Instead, we’re going to honor our vows to the Queen of Heaven. [3] We’re going to pour out our wine offerings in devotion to her. We’ll do it just like our ancestors did, along with our kings and their officials in towns throughout Judah and up and down the streets of Jerusalem. Back in those days we had plenty of food and things went well for us. [4] 18But since we stopped giving offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out wine in her name, we’ve lost everything. It was all taken from us by the sword and by famine.”
19Women in the crowd said, “We’re going to keep making offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out wine in her honor. Do you think we make those special cakes [5] stamped with her picture and pour out wine offerings without the consent of our husbands?”
Jeremiah warns that disaster follows them
20Jeremiah answered all the people, men and women. 21He said, “Don't you know the LORD saw those sacrifices you made to other gods? He saw you do it. And he saw everyone else who did it: your ancestors, your kings, their officials, and people all over Judah and in Jerusalem. He didn’t miss it.22What you did was so evil that the LORD couldn’t tolerate it. It was repulsive. That's why your land lies in ruin today, a wasteland that horrifies people when they see it. 23Blame it all on the offerings you burned for other gods and the fact that you ignored the voice of God, walked away from his law, and refused to obey his instructions. This is the reason for the disaster.
God: You’ll never go home
24All you men and women need to listen to the word of the LORD. I'm talking to all of you from Judah who are now living in Egypt.25This is the message the LORD of everyone and the God of Israel has for you women:
You said it with your mouth, and you said it with your hands. You promised to carry out the vows you made and to offer sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven. You promised to pour out your wine offering in devotion to her. Well, go ahead and do it. Honor your vows and perform your rituals. 26But listen to me you people from Judah who now live in Egypt. Believe me because I am swearing this by my own name: you will never do what I just did. You will never again make a vow in my name. Not as long as you live here in Egypt. You will never again have the right to say you will do something “as sure as the LORD lives.”
27I’m keeping my eye on these people. I'm going to see to it they face tough times ahead. All the men of Judah living in Egypt will be annihilated. They will die by the sword and by starvation. 28A few who came from Judah will escape what's coming in Egypt, and they’ll go back to the land of Judah. But they’ll be few indeed. That's when the rest of the people from Judah who are stuck here in Egypt will realize that my words proved true. Theirs didn’t.
29Here's a sign for you, a promise from the LORD. I’ll punish you while you live in this land. And I want you to know that I’m going to keep that promise. When I tell you something, I want you to believe it.
30Listen to me. I will give Pharaoh Hophra, [6] king of Egypt, to his enemies who want to kill him. I’ll do it just like I did for King Zedekiah of Judah when I handed him over to Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar, an enemy who wanted to kill him.
Footnotes
Jeremiah may have addressed Judeans living in colonies in these cities and regions. So he may have directed it at more than those who came with him after the fall of Jerusalem a few months earlier. There were likely communities of Jews already living there, perhaps as descendants of captives taken in Egyptian raids into Israel and Judah decades earlier. The location of Migdol is unknown. Memphis and Tahpanhes is in the north.
That’s a bold and jarring statement to make to a people raised to believe that the land belonged to them forever, as promised to their ancestors (Genesis 12:7; 15:18-21).
The Queen of Heaven may have been a fertility goddess who went by different names in different locations and time. She may have been Ishtar, worshiped by Babylonians and by Assyrians before them. In Canaan, where Hebrew ancestors of the Jews settled, the locals worshiped Astarte and Ashtoreth. Fertility rituals may have been especially disgusting to people devoted to God. One of the rituals seemed to involve having sex with a shrine or temple priest or prostitute, in an attempt to please the gods and goddesses. That didn’t go over well with spiritual leaders on the Exodus out of Egypt. “Aaron’s grandson, Phinehas…picked up a spear. He followed the man and woman into the back room of the tent and speared them both at once, through the gut—a twofer” (Numbers 25:7-8).
This was likely the same reason the first generation of Israelites in the land worshiped the gods of Canaan. They arrived as refugees and former slaves. They may not have known much about farming and herding. But when they saw the locals doing both with excellent results, they may have figured it was because of the local Canaanite gods. So they offered sacrifices to Baal and the other gods popular in the region.
The cakes were possibly crescent cakes, shaped like a moon. The baker could have used a seal or stamp to press a picture of the goddess’s face into the dough.
King Hophra ruled from 589-570 BC. He was an ally of Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, and tried to come to his rescue when Babylon attacked. But Babylon pushed his army back to Egypt. Hophra’s military later revolted and killed him.
Discussion Questions
- Sorry, there are currently no questions for this chapter.
