Day 226—We are in the eighth month of Bible reading, with more of Israel’s history and prophecy.

    Day 226 – Jeremiah 26 – 29 (Jeremiah threatened & spared, Zedekiah & Nebuchadnezzar, a false prophet, letter to the exiles)

Jeremiah 26 repeats the message and threat to our prophet from 11 years earlier when God offered the relenting of the disaster if the people would repent. (More recently, there is no such offer.) Jeremiah’s life is/was threatened, but the city officials spare him, listing other prophets whose lives were spared in the days of Hezekiah and Jehoiakim.

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Jeremiah 27. Jeremiah’s message now is to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon. As the object lesson to accompany the message, Jeremiah was to make and wear a wooden yoke on his neck.

The message from the Creator of earth and everything in it, “I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, MY SERVANT, (in that he serves God’s plans).  All the nations shall serve him, and his son, and his grandson until the time of his own land comes. Then, many nations and great kings shall make him their slave. 

BUT if any nation or kingdom will NOT serve this Nebuchadnezzar and put its neck UNDER THE YOKE OF THE KING OF BABYLON, I will punish that nation with sword, famine, and pestilence.”   

“But any nation that WILL bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land to work it and dwell there,” declares the LORD.

Then Jeremiah warns the people of Judah and Jerusalem not to listen to false prophets and priests but to submit to Nebuchadnezzar’s yoke.  God promises to bring back the vessels of the House of the Lord when He brings back the exiles…in 70 years. (One year for every Sabbath year they did not honor.)

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Jeremiah 28. In that same year when Zedekiah (the last king to reign), the false prophet, Hananiah spoke against what Jeremiah said, saying instead that the LORD would break the yoke of Babylon and bring back the people in TWO YEARS.  To illustrate his false prophecy, he went to Jeremiah, took the yoke off his neck, and broke it.  

Soon after Jeremiah went to Hananiah with this word from the LORD, “You have broken wooden bars, but you have made in their place bars of iron. I have put upon the neck of all these nations an iron yoke to serve Nebuchadnezzar, and they shall serve him.”

“Furthermore, listen Hananiah, the LORD has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a LIE. Therefore, behold, I will remove you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have uttered rebellion against the LORD.”

Hananiah died in the seventh month.

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Jeremiah 29. Then Jeremiah sends a letter to the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, along with King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, and all the officials and craftsmen. 

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem.…

” Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
“When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

Jeremiah 29:5-14

But to those who refused to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar, the LORD said…

“Behold I’m sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten. I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them because they did not pay attention to my words.”

The LORD trashes the lying words of the false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah. Then the king of Babylon “roasts them in the fire!!!” God also curses the false prophet Shemaiah, and all his descendants, none of whom will see the return from exile…. for speaking “rebellion against the LORD.”