This incident happened during the respite in the siege, as did those recorded in 32:1-15; 37-38; and 39:15-18 (cf. vv. 21-22). The year was about 588 B.C.
34:8-9 The following message came to Jeremiah from the Lord after Zedekiah had commanded all the Jerusalemites to free their fellow Israelite servants.454
34:10 The people of Jerusalem entered into a covenant to free their servants, and they followed through with their promise and liberated them. We do not know their motive(s). Perhaps the servants were needed to defend the city along with their masters, or they may have provided too many mouths for their masters to feed. Perhaps this represents repentance on the part of the masters who wanted to honor the Mosaic Covenant (cf. Exod. 21:2-6; Deut. 15:12-18). If it was repentance, it was short-lived and shallow.
34:11 Shortly thereafter the masters reneged on their promise, broke their covenant, and brought their servants back into subjection. It was a predictable response from people who had long ago and repeatedly demonstrated that they were covenant-breakers. Nebuchadnezzar's withdrawal may have been the impetus for the peoples' decision to break their promise to their servants. They may have thought that they were safe and that life would return to normal soon.
34:12-13 The Lord then sent Jeremiah to remind the people that He had made a covenant with their forefathers to set them at liberty from their bondage in Egypt (Exod. 19:4-6). They of all people should have shown mercy to others in bondage. The Passover commemorated their emancipation from Egyptian slavery.
34:14 Part of the Mosaic Covenant specified that the Israelites should liberate their servants who had sold themselves to them after six years of service (cf. Exod. 21:2-6; Deut. 15:12-18). But the forefathers had disobeyed the Lord and disregarded His word.
34:15-16 Recently the people had made a covenant to release their neighbors and had followed through with it, but then they changed their minds and brought them back into servitude. The fact that they had made this covenant in the temple indicates that they made it with the Lord as well as with one another. Breaking it profaned the Lord's name (reputation) because they had made the covenant in His name.455
34:17 Because the people had not released their servants, the Lord was going to release them from His protection to experience the sword, disease, and starvation. They would become an awful example to the other kingdoms of the earth. Then there would be no distinction between Hebrew masters and servants; they would all be servants of Nebuchadnezzar.
34:18-20 The Lord would give all the people who had broken the covenant, regardless of their social position, into the hand of their enemy. They would die without the privilege of a burial; birds and beasts would consume their carcasses (cf. 7:33; 16:4; 19:7; Deut. 28:26). They had used a typical covenant-making ritual. They had cut a young calf in two and the parties of the covenant then passed between the halves (cf. Gen. 15:10, 17).
"The fate of the animal was a picture of the fate that would befall them if they broke the covenant. The rite has its parallel in the covenant ceremonies of the ancient Near East in which a beast was cut in pieces to serve as a symbol of the judgment that would befall the covenant-breaker."456
This judgment would be the fate of the people (v. 20).
34:21 Yahweh would also give Zedekiah and his officials into the hand of the Babylonians, even though at the time of this message the Babylonian army had withdrawn from Jerusalem temporarily.
34:22 The sovereign Lord was going to command the Babylonian army to go back to Jerusalem, to fight against it, to take it, and to burn it. He would also make the cities of Judah a desolation without human inhabitants (cf. 10:22). This further breach of covenant was one more nail in the coffin of the Southern Kingdom.
"When Jeremiah redeems his cousin's land (chap. 32) and when the Rechabites refuse to drink wine (chap. 35), they act out of loyalty to ancient obligations in spite of the threatening circumstances of the Babylonian attack. When Judah's leading citizens take back their slaves, they not only violate covenants old and new; they deny the LORD's word through Jeremiah that their land had been assigned to Nebuchadrezzar's control, just as King Jehoiakim had denied it (chap. 36)."457
