Jeremiah 27:9-10

27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ¹  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ²  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ³  subject to the king of Babylon.’ 27:10 Do not listen to them, ⁴  because their prophecies are lies. ⁵  Listening to them will only cause you ⁶  to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. ⁷ 

Jeremiah 27:14-17

27:14 Do not listen to the prophets who are telling you that you do not need to serve ⁸  the king of Babylon. For they are prophesying lies to you. 27:15 For I, the Lord, affirm ⁹  that I did not send them. They are prophesying lies to you. If you ¹⁰  listen to them, I will drive you and the prophets who are prophesying lies out of the land and you will all die in exile.” ¹¹ 

27:16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that ¹²  the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. ¹³  But they are prophesying a lie to you. 27:17 Do not listen to them. Be subject to the king of Babylon. Then you ¹⁴  will continue to live. Why should this city be made a pile of rubble?’” ¹⁵ 

¹ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

² sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

³ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

⁴ tn The words “Don’t listen to them” have been repeated from v. 9a to pick up the causal connection between v. 9a and v. 10 that is formally introduced by a causal particle in v. 10 in the original text.

⁵ tn Heb “they are prophesying a lie.”

⁶ tn Heb “lies will result in your being taken far…” (לְמַעַן [lÿma’an] + infinitive). This is a rather clear case of the particle לְמַעַן introducing result (contra BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. There is no irony in this statement; it is a bold prediction).

⁷ tn The words “out of your country” are not in the text but are implicit in the meaning of the verb. The words “in exile” are also not in the text but are implicit in the context. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

⁹ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

¹⁰ sn The verbs are again plural referring to the king and his royal advisers.

¹¹ tn Heb “…drive you out and you will perish, you and the prophets who are prophesying lies.”

¹² tn Heb “don’t listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you….” The sentence has been broken up for the sake of English style and one level of embedded quotes has been eliminated to ease complexity.

¹³ sn This refers to the valuable articles of the temple treasury which were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar four years earlier when he carried off Jeconiah, his family, some of his nobles, and some of the cream of Judean society (2 Kgs 24:10-16, especially v. 13 and see also vv. 19-20 in the verses following).

¹⁴ tn The imperative with vav (ו) here and in v. 12 after another imperative are a good example of the use of the imperative to introduce a consequence. (See GKC 324-25 §110.f and see Gen 42:18. This is a common verb in this idiom.)

¹⁵ tn According to E. W. Bullinger (Figures of Speech, 954) both this question and the one in v. 13 are examples of rhetorical questions of prohibition / “don’t let this city be made a pile of rubble.”