Chapters 27 and 28 record the controversies Jeremiah had with false prophets in Jerusalem before the Babylonian captivity. The events recorded may have happened sometime after a failed coup attempt against Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon in December, 595, and January, 594 B.C.360
This chapter contains three parts: Jeremiah's warning to the foreign messengers (vv. 1-11), his appeal to King Zedekiah (vv. 12-15), and his appeal to the priests and people of Jerusalem (vv. 16-22).
27:1 Jeremiah received a message from the Lord toward the beginning of King Zedekiah's reign.361The first verse of chapter 28 locates the time of this prophecy more exactly, namely, in the king's fourth year (594 or 593 B.C.).
27:2 The prophet was to make fetters, specifically yokes, and to put one set of them on his neck. Evidently Jeremiah walked around wearing this half-filled yoke as a lopsided burden to illustrate his message. This was another of his symbolic acts (cf. 13:1-11; 19:1-13; 1 Kings 22:11; Isa. 20). The animal yoke, of course, represented submission, servitude, and captivity (cf. 1 Kings 22:11; Ezek. 7:23).
27:3-4 Jeremiah was then to send word to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon through the envoys that had come from those places to visit King Zedekiah (cf. 25:21-22).362These ambassadors were to take a message from Yahweh back to their masters. He apparently made one set of the object lessons for each of the ambassadors to take back home with him.363
The Babylonian Chronicles illuminate the historical background of this situation. Two years earlier an unnamed enemy had attacked Nebuchadnezzar, and the following year he had to deal with a revolt within his borders. Smaller nations in the west saw this as an opportunity to throw off Babylon's authority. The same nations had formed a confederacy to revolt against Assyria years earlier, so the purpose of these messengers seems to have been to form another treaty but this time against Babylon.364The recent accession of Psammetik II as Pharaoh of Egypt may have been another inducement to revolt.365
27:5 Yahweh announced that He was the creator of all things and would give His creation to whomever was pleasing in His sight.
"Marduk of Babylon might claim authority over nations by right of conquest, but the LORD claims the right to rule as creator."366
27:6-7 The Lord had determined to give their lands to Nebuchadnezzar, His servant (cf. 25:9; 43:10), until the time came when He would turn over Nebuchadnezzar's lands to another master (i.e., Cyrus the Persian). This would not be until Nebuchadnezzar's son and grandson had ruled, however, namely, Evil-Merodach and Belshazzar (52:31; Dan. 5:1, 30).
27:8 If any of the nations Jeremiah was addressing failed to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, the Lord would destroy that nation using Nebuchadnezzar as His instrument. War, famine, and disease would follow resistance to the Babylonian invader.
"To resist the known will of God is always spiritual suicide."367
27:9-10 These foreign kings should not listen to their counselors and prophets who advocated resistance to Nebuchadnezzar. If they did, they would only experience greater destruction, deportation, and death.
27:11 However, if those kings surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar, their people would be able to remain in their own land and live in it.
"To be able to discern the signs of the times (Mt. 16:3) and know what the will of the Lord is (Eph. 5:17) demands close fellowship with God and an obedient, perceptive spirit."368
27:12-13 Jeremiah also counseled Zedekiah to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar. If he did, the Judahites could continue to live. But if he resisted, the people of Judah would die by the sword, starvation, and plague.
27:14-15 Jeremiah told Zedekiah not to listen to the false prophets who were advocating resistance because Yahweh had not sent them. Listening to their advice would result in exile and death for the king and the false prophets.
"To underestimate the power of a lie in times of national distress is sheer folly."369
27:16 Jeremiah also prophesied to the priests and the people assuring them that the prophecies of the speedy end of the captivity and the soon return of the people that had already gone into exile were lies.
27:17 The priests and people should not listen to these false prophets. They should submit to Nebuchadnezzar and live rather than resisting and seeing Jerusalem destroyed.
27:18 If the false prophets were true, they should ask Yahweh to keep the remaining furnishings and accessories still in Jerusalem from being taken captive to Babylon (cf. 2 Kings 25:13-17; Dan. 1:1-2). The granting of their petition would validate them as authentic prophets.
27:19-22 The Lord's word concerning these treasures of the temple, palace, and city was that Nebuchadnezzar would take them to Babylon where they would remain until the Lord restored His people to their land (cf. Ezra 1:7-11).
Jeremiah's symbolic act of wearing a yoke led to another symbolic act, the breaking of that yoke. Jeremiah's act brought a false prophet into direct confrontation with the true prophet.
28:1 The following event took place in the same year as the preceding one, 594 or 593 B.C., in the fifth month. Another prophet, Hananiah ben Azzur from Gibeon in Benjamin (about 5 miles northwest of Jerusalem), spoke to Jeremiah in the temple courtyard before the priests and the people who had assembled there (cf. 27:16).370
28:2-3 Hananiah prophesied that Yahweh had broken Babylon's authority over Judah. Within two years the Lord would return to the temple the vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had already taken to Babylon. Hananiah, whose name means "Yahweh has been gracious,"announced a message that Yahweh would be gracious.371Jeremiah predicted that the captivity would last 70 years (25:11-12; 29:10), but Hananiah predicted it would last only two years.
28:4 The Lord would also return Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) and the people who went with him to Babylon as captives, Hananiah predicted, because Yahweh would break Babylon's yoke. This flatly contradicted Jeremiah's prophecy that Jeconiah would die in Babylon (22:24-27; cf. 52:31-34).
28:5-6 Jeremiah responded to Hananiah sincerely but ironically. So be it, he said. Would that the Lord would do just as Hananiah had predicted. Jeremiah wished that Hananiah's prophecy would come true because he loved his people and his land and did not want them to experience the horrors of invasion and a long exile.
28:7 Yet Jeremiah urged the people to listen to what he was about to say to them. What Jeremiah wished would happen would not.
28:8-9 Time would tell, he said, whether Hananiah's prophecies of peace or Jeremiah's prophecies of war were truly from Yahweh. One of the tests of a true prophet in Israel was the fulfillment of his predictions (cf. 23:16-40; Deut. 18:21-22).
"Jeremiah's meaning was that the usual message of the earlier prophets was one of doom, and that when he spoke of judgment he was more in the line of the predecessors than Hananiah, who spoke only of peace and prosperity (Deut. 18:20-22)."372
28:10-11 Hananiah proceeded to deliver a symbolic act of his own by vandalizing Jeremiah's sign. He dramatically smashed the yoke that Jeremiah had been wearing on his neck (cf. 27:2). He claimed that similarly within two years Yahweh would break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar off the neck of all the nations that he was oppressing.
28:12-13 Shortly after these events, the Lord told Jeremiah to return to Hananiah with a message. He told the false prophet that by breaking the wooden yoke off Jeremiah's neck he had only made Nebuchadnezzar's oppression more certain. Failure to repent had resulted in more certain judgment.
". . . we only add to our chastening when we resist it--exchanging wood for iron."373
28:14 Jeremiah told Hananiah that Yahweh of Hosts, Israel's God, said that all the nations round about would serve Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonian king would even control the beasts; his supremacy would be total. Nothing the people could do would divert this judgment (cf. Acts 20:26-27). His yoke over them was as unbreakable as iron (cf. 15:12).
28:15-16 Jeremiah also told Hananiah that the Lord had not sent the false prophet. Furthermore, the Lord had revealed that He would take Hananiah's life within a year because he had encouraged the people to rebel against the Lord's word. The penalty that false prophets were to suffer under the Mosaic Covenant was death (Deut. 18:20).
"It is a serious thing indeed to use the name of God to say that secondary solutions can cure our problems when the real problem is that people have turned away from God and the truth that He has revealed in verbalized, propositional form concerning Himself."374
28:17 Sure enough, about two months later Hananiah died (cf. v. 1; 2 Kings 1:17; 7:19-20; 8:10-15; Ezek. 11:13; Acts 5:1-11). The prophet who predicted deliverance in two years died in two months. God graciously gave him two months to repent before He put him to death. His death was another object lesson to the people on the importance of obeying God's word.
"In chapters 26-29 the deaths of four prophets are predicted and/or reported. Of the prophets named in these chapters, only Jeremiah survives to see the fulfillment of the prophecies given to him by the LORD."375
