Jeremiah 28:17

3 And it happened the day after, that Pashur brought out Jeremiah from prison; and Jeremiah said to him, — Not Pashur has Jehovah called thy name, But terror on every side: 4 For thus saith Jehovah, — Behold, I will make thee a terror To thyself and to all thy friends; And fall shall they by the sword of thine enemies, While thine eyes are looking on; And all Judah will I deliver Into the hand of the king of Babylon; And he shall carry them into Babylon, And shall smite them with the sword: 5 And I will give up all the strength of this city, And all its labor and its every precious thing; And all the treasures of the kings of Judah Will I give up into the hands of their enemies; And they shall spoil them and take them away, And they shall lead them into Babylon. 6 And thou, Pashur, and all the inhabitants of thy house, Go shall ye into captivity; Thou shalt come to Babylon, and there die, And there shalt thou be buried and thy friends, To whom thou hast falsely prophesied.

28:10-17 Hananiah is sentenced to die, and Jeremiah, when he has received direction from God, boldly tells him so; but not before he received that commission. Those have much to answer for, who tell sinners that they shall have peace, though they harden their hearts in contempt of God's word. The servant of God must be gentle to all men. He must give up even his right, and leave the Lord to plead his cause. Every attempt of ungodly men to make vain the purposes of God, will add to their miseries.

So Hananiah the prophet died the same year,.... That he had delivered out his prophecy; in the same year in which Jeremiah said he should die; which proved him to be a false prophet, and Jeremiah to be a true one: in the seventh month: it was two months after he had prophesied; for it was in the fifth month that he prophesied, and in the seventh he died; not after seven months, as Theodoret remarks, but in two months; so he that prophesied, that within two years what he foretold would come to pass, in two months time dies himself, according to the word of the Lord, and his prophecies die with him. The Jewish writers move a difficulty here, how he should be said to die the same year, when the seventh month was the beginning of another year; for the civil year of the Jews began from the seventh month, or the month Tisri; as their ecclesiastical year from the month Nisan or Abib.

To solve this they observe a tradition, that he died the last day of the sixth month, or the eve of the new year; and ordered his sons and his servants, before his death, to hide it, and not bring him out to be buried till after the year was begun, to make Jeremiah a liar: to which agrees the Targum, both of the clause in Jeremiah 28:16; and this; the former of which it paraphrases thus, "this year shall thou die; and in the other year (or the year following) thou shalt be buried;'' and this verse thus, "and Hananiah the false prophet died this year, and was buried in the seventh month:'' but there was no occasion to raise such a difficulty, since it would have been enough to have verified the prediction, that he died any time within the twelve months from the date of it; and, besides, the solution makes the difficulty greater, and contradicts the very text, which says, he died in the seventh month.

16. this year … die—The prediction was uttered in the fifth month (Jer 28:1); Hananiah's death took place in the seventh month, that is, within two months after the prediction, answering with awful significance to the two years in which Hananiah had foretold that the yoke imposed by Babylon would end. rebellion—opposition to God's plain direction, that all should submit to Babylon (Jer 29:32).

The Lord's testimony against Hananiah. - Apparently not long after Jeremiah had departed, he received from the Lord the commission to go to Hananiah and to say to him: Jeremiah 28:13 . "Thus saith Jahveh: Yokes of wood hast thou broken, but hast made in place of them yokes of iron. Jeremiah 28:14 . For thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: A yoke of iron I lay upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him; and the beasts of the field also have I given him." - When the prophet says: Yokes of wood hast thou broken, etc., we are not to understand him as speaking of the breaking of the wooden yoke Jeremiah had been wearing; he gives the deeper meaning of that occurrence. By breaking Jeremiah's wooden yoke, Hananiah has only signified that the yoke Nebuchadnezzar lays on the nations will not be so easily broken as a wooden one, but is of iron, i.e., not to be broken. The plural "yokes" is to be explained by the emblematical import of the words, and is not here to be identified, as it sometimes may be, with the singular, Jeremiah 28:10 . Jeremiah 28:14 shows in what sense Hananiah put an iron yoke in the place of the wooden one: Jahveh will lay iron yokes on all nations, that they may serve the king of Babel. Hananiah's breaking the wooden yoke does not alter the divine decree, but is made to contribute to its fuller revelation. With the last clause of Jeremiah 28:14 , cf.

Jeremiah 27:6 . - Hereupon Jeremiah forewarns the false prophets what is to be God's punishment on them for their false and audacious declarations. Jeremiah 28:15 . "Hear now, Hananiah: Jahveh hath not sent thee, and thou hast made this people to believe a lie. Jeremiah 28:16 . Therefore thus saith Jahveh: Behold, I cast thee from off the face of the earth; this year shalt thou die, for thou hast spoken rebellion against Jahveh." "The year" equals this year, as in Isaiah 37:30 . The words "for thou hast spoken," etc., recall Deuteronomy 13:6 . They involve an application to Hananiah's case of the command there given to put such a prophet to death, and show how it can with justice be said that the Lord will cast him from off the face of the earth. The verb משׁלּחך is chosen for the sake of the play on לא שׁלחך. God has not sent him as prophet to His people, but will send him away from off the earth, i.e., cause him to die. - In Jeremiah 28:17 it is recorded that this saying was soon fulfilled. Hananiah died in the seventh month of that year, i.e., two months after his controversy with Jeremiah (cf. Jeremiah 28:1 ).

2 . This month , &c.] The ‘month’ is the one corresponding to our Mar.–Apr., called in J and E ( Exodus 13:4 , Exodus 23:15 , Exodus 34:18 ) and Deuteronomy 16:1 ) ‘Abib,’ and in the later post-exilic writings ( Nehemiah 2:1 , Esther 3:7 ) by its Bab. name, Nisan . P never, like the older pre-exilic writers, calls the months by their Canaanitish or Phoenician names, Abib ( ll.cc. ), Ziv ( 1 Kings 6:1 ; 1 Kings 6:37 ), Ethanim ( ib. 1 Kings 8:2 ), Bul ( ib. 1 Kings 6:38 ); but, as do the late parts of Kings ( 1 Kings 12:32-33 [compiler], 2 Kings 25:1 ; 2 Kings 25:3 ; 2 Kings 25:8 ; 2 Kings 25:25 ; 2 Kings 25:27 ), Jer. ( Jeremiah 1:3 , Jeremiah 28:1 ; Jeremiah 28:17 , Jeremiah 36:22 al. ), Ezek. ( Ezekiel 1:1 , Ezekiel 8:1 al. ), Hag. ( Haggai 1:1 ; Haggai 1:15 , Haggai 2:1 ), Zech. ( Zechariah 1:1 ; Zechariah 1:7 , Zechariah 7:1 ; Zechariah 7:3 ), and Chron., denotes them by numbers ( 1 Chronicles 16:1 ; 1 Chronicles 19:1 ; Leviticus 16:29 , &c.). The old Hebrew year began in autumn ( Exodus 23:16 ; cf. Exodus 34:22 , 1 Samuel 1:20 ); and P here refers the later custom of beginning it in spring (see Jeremiah 36:22 ) to the time of the institution of the Passover in Egypt. The Bab. year began in spring; but whether the Hebrew custom was due to Bab. influence is uncertain. The earliest clear cases of the Heb. year beginning in spring are in the dates quoted above from Kings and Jer.; but 2 Kings 19:29 (= Isaiah 37:30 ) perhaps pre-supposes it.