Jeremiah wrote another letter, this time in response to a letter that the false prophet Shemaiah in Babylon wrote to Zephaniah the priest and the Judahites still in Jerusalem. Jeremiah quoted Shemaiah's letter, and it fills most of this section (vv. 26-28). Shemaiah's letter was a reaction to Jeremiah's first letter to the exiles (vv. 1-23).
29:24 The Lord had a message for Shemaiah the Nehelamite, too. There are no other references to this man in the Bible. "Nehelamite"may come from the Hebrew word halam, meaning "to dream."Thus this may be a nickname for him: the dreamer (cf. v. 8; 27:9).386This word could also be the name of his family or birthplace, though no other families or places of that name are known.
29:25-26 This man had sent letters in his own name, not in Yahweh's name, to Zephaniah ben Maaseiah the priest, the other priests, and the people in Jerusalem. He had told them that the Lord wanted Zephaniah to be the priest in charge of order in the temple instead of Jehoiada, the authorized priest.387Zephaniah was to put any "mad man"who prophesied in the Lord's name in the stocks and his neck in an iron collar (cf. 20:1-3).388
"The irony is that Zephaniah would, according to Deut 28:34, become a madman himself when he witnessed the judgment coming upon Jerusalem."389
29:27-28 Shemaiah also reproved Zephaniah for not rebuking Jeremiah since Jeremiah had written the exiles encouraging them to settle down in Babylon (vv. 4-7).
This pericope does not record what the Lord said would happen to Shemaiah because he had done what he did; verse 25 has no apodosis. We must assume that divine judgment would come on him. The main reason for this pericope is to expose the wicked advice Shemaiah was giving, not to explain the judgment he would receive. The next pericope tells what would happen to Shemaiah.
