Jeremiah 29:15

29:8-19 Let men beware how they call those prophets whom they choose after their own fancies, and how they consider their fancies and dreams to be revelations from God. False prophets flatter people in their sins, because they love to be flattered; and they speak smoothly to their prophets, that their prophets may speak smoothly to them. God promises that they should return after seventy years were accomplished. By this it appears, that the seventy years of the captivity are not to be reckoned from the last captivity, but the first. It will be the bringing to pass of God's good word to them. This shall form God's purposes. We often do not know our own minds, but the Lord is never at an uncertainty. We are sometimes ready to fear that God's designs are all against us; but as to his own people, even that which seems evil, is for good. He will give them, not the expectations of their fears, or the expectations of their fancies, but the expectations of their faith; the end he has promised, which will be the best for them. When the Lord pours out an especial spirit of prayer, it is a good sign that he is coming toward us in mercy. Promises are given to quicken and encourage prayer. He never said, Seek ye me in vain. Those who remained at Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed, notwithstanding what the false prophets said to the contrary.

Because ye have said,.... That is, some of them; for here the Lord, by the prophet, turns from the godly among the captives, whom he had been advising, encouraging, and comforting before, to those who gave heed to the false prophets, who promised them a speedy return to their own land, and which they believed; and therefore rejected and despised the prophecies of Jeremiah, and others: the Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon; and therefore stood in no need of other prophets that were in Judea, or in Jerusalem, nor should hearken to them; but believe those that were raised up among themselves, rather than others at a distance; and though these were false prophets, yet, being such that prophesied to them things that were agreeable, they were willing to believe them, and to consider them, and receive them, as prophets sent of God, when they were not.

Jeremiah 29:15 . Because ye have said, &c. — The LXX. have transposed this verse, and placed it “where,” says Blaney, “it undoubtedly ought to stand,” immediately before Jeremiah 29:21 ; “this emendation,” says he, “I have adopted, as by it a due order and connection are restored, both in the place from whence the verse is removed, and in that to which it is transferred, a sufficient proof of its authenticity.” The Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon — This is meant of the false prophets who foretold nothing but peace and prosperity. The reader will easily observe how properly this sentence, as Blaney has just observed, would follow Jeremiah 29:20 , and precede Jeremiah 29:21 , and how well it would connect with both.

Verses 15-23. - Jeremiah's denunciation of two leading false prophets at Babylon, with a digression on the fate of Zedekiah and Jerusalem. Some eminent critics maintain that vers. 16-20 are an interpolation, and this view is certainly supported By the omission of these verses in the Septuagint. It must also in fairness be admitted that the natural connection of ver. 15 is with ver. 21, not with ver. 16. But it does not follow that vers. 16-20 are an arbitrary interpolation. They may be regarded either as a digression in the original letter, or as inserted by an after-thought when the substance of the letter was brought into its present form. Jeremiah 29:15

15 . This v . naturally links with Jeremiah 29:21 ff., while the intervening vv . make an apparent severance in the logical connexion, and are absent from LXX, except in a certain recension (Lucianic), where, however, they precede Jeremiah 29:15 . With this transposition, as at least modifying the objection arising from the break of logical connexion, Gi. agrees, maintaining, as he does, their genuineness. Co. (and so Du.) refuses to consider the vv . as belonging to the original letter, making Jeremiah 29:16-18 to be in substance a reproduction of Jeremiah 24:8 f., Jeremiah 29:19 to have its origin in Jeremiah 24:4 ff. and parallel passages, and Jeremiah 29:20 to be taking up the line of thought anew from Jeremiah 29:16 . Dr. suggests that, as the passage seems out of place in a letter to the Jews in Babylonia, dealing as it does with the fate of the Jerusalem Jews, it belongs only to the recension of that letter which subsequently was incorporated in this Book. If we are to abide by the MT. in the matter, the sense appears to be this: One of the difficulties raised by the exiles when the prospect of seventy years’ captivity was held out to them would be, We have prophets here at Babylon who tell us just the reverse of all this. Which shall we believe? To this the reply of Jeremiah is twofold. (i) These prophets’ teaching shall soon be disproved. The king and the remnants of the kingdom, upon whose continued existence at Jerusalem they lay such stress, will soon pass away.

Ye shall not soon be restored to your brethren, but they shall be exiles and scattered like to you. (ii) The false prophets, who thus delude you, shall themselves miserably perish and become a proverb and by-word. For ] rather, Because , connecting this v . directly with Jeremiah 29:21 . “Because ye congratulate yourselves on having prophets in your exile, I tell you how soon ye shall discover that they are valueless.” 15–19 . The impending fate of Zedekiah and his people. Cp. Jeremiah 24:8-10 .

(15) Because ye have said, The Lord hath raised us up prophets . . . —The words point to the boast of some of the exiles, that they, too, had the guidance of prophets whom, as in Jeremiah 29:20 ; Jeremiah 29:24 , they were inclined to follow in preference to Jeremiah. In answer to that boast, he emphasises the contrast between the exiles in whom the prophet sees the future hope of his nation and the worthless king (Zedekiah) and people who had been left in Jerusalem, and for whom he foretells yet sharper sufferings. The symbolism of the “vile figs” is reproduced in Jeremiah 29:17 from Jeremiah 24:1-2 . The word for “vile” is, however, not the same as in that passage, and has the stronger force of “horrible” or “loathsome.”

15. Because—referring not to the preceding words, but to Jer 29:10, 11, "Jehovah saith this to you" (that is, the prophecy of the continuance of the captivity seventy years), "because ye have said, The Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon," namely, foretelling our speedy deliverance (this their prophecy is supposed, not expressed; accordingly, Jer 29:16-19 contradict this false hope again, Jer 29:8, 9, 21). He, in this fifteenth verse, turns his address from the godly (Jer 29:12-14) to the ungodly listeners, to false prophets.