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Jeremiah 21: What the Passage Says

66 claims across 14 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 21 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Zedekiah sends two officials to ask Jeremiah to inquire of the LORD, hoping God will act as he has in the past and make Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon withdraw. The answer is the opposite of what they hoped: God says he himself will fight against the city, strike its people with plague, burn the city with fire, and hand the survivors and the king over to Babylon to be struck with the sword. Jeremiah is told to set before the people a choice, stay and die or surrender and live, and to warn the royal house of David that unless it judges justly, God's anger will burn unquenched.

Claim by Claim

  1. 21:1
    • A word came to Jeremiah from the LORD.
    • King Zedekiah sent Pashhur son of Malchiah to Jeremiah.
    • King Zedekiah sent Zephaniah son of Maaseiah the priest to Jeremiah.
    • Zephaniah's father Maaseiah, or Zephaniah himself, is identified as the priest.
    • The word came at the time of that sending.
    • The men sent spoke to Jeremiah.
  2. 21:2
    • The messengers asked Jeremiah to inquire of the LORD on their behalf.
    • They gave as their reason that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon was making war against them.
    • They said perhaps the LORD would deal with them according to all his wonders.
    • They said the purpose was that Nebuchadrezzar would withdraw from them.
  3. 21:3
    • Jeremiah answered them.
    • Jeremiah told them what they were to say to Zedekiah.
  4. 21:4
    • The message is introduced as the words of the LORD, the God of Israel.
    • The LORD says he is turning back the weapons of war that are in their hands.
    • Those weapons are the ones they are fighting with against the king of Babylon.
    • Those weapons are the ones they are fighting with against the Chaldeans.
    • The Chaldeans are besieging them outside the wall.
    • The LORD says he will gather them into the middle of this city.
  5. 21:5
    • The LORD says he himself will fight against them.
    • He will fight with an outstretched hand.
    • He will fight with a strong arm.
    • He will fight in anger, in fury, and in great wrath.
  6. 21:6
    • The LORD says he will strike the inhabitants of this city.
    • He will strike both man and beast.
    • They will die of a great pestilence.
  7. 21:7
    • The LORD declares that afterward he will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah.
    • He will hand over Zedekiah's servants.
    • He will hand over the people.
    • He will hand over those left in this city from the pestilence, the sword, and the famine.
    • He will hand them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.
    • He will hand them into the hand of their enemies.
    • He will hand them into the hand of those who seek their life.
    • Nebuchadrezzar will strike them with the edge of the sword.
    • He will not spare them.
    • He will not pity them.
    • He will not show them mercy.
  8. 21:8
    • Jeremiah is told to say something to this people.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the LORD.
    • The LORD says he sets before them the way of life.
    • The LORD says he sets before them the way of death.
  9. 21:9
    • Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.
    • Whoever goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who besiege them will live.
    • That person's life will be to him as spoil taken in war.
  10. 21:10
    • The LORD says he has set his face against this city for harm and not for good.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The city will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon.
    • The king of Babylon will burn the city with fire.
  11. 21:11
    • A word is addressed concerning the house of the king of Judah.
    • The house of the king of Judah is told to hear the word of the LORD.
  12. 21:12
    • The house of David is addressed.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the LORD.
    • The house of David is commanded to give just judgment in the morning.
    • The house of David is commanded to rescue the one who has been robbed from the hand of his oppressor.
    • Otherwise the LORD's fury will go out like fire.
    • That fire will burn with no one to quench it.
    • The cause of that fury is the evil of their deeds.
  13. 21:13
    • The LORD says he is against the one addressed.
    • The one addressed is called the inhabitant of the valley.
    • The one addressed is called the rock of the plain.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • Those addressed say, Who will come down against us?
    • Those addressed say, Who will enter our dwellings?
  14. 21:14
    • The LORD says he will punish them according to the fruit of their deeds.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The LORD says he will kindle a fire in her forest.
    • That fire will devour everything around it.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1
Zedekiah was the last king of Judah. Babylon had put him on the throne as a vassal ruler about ten years earlier, after deporting his predecessor; this scene comes after he rebelled and a Babylonian army arrived to besiege Jerusalem. The two men he sends are official envoys, a priest and a court official, not friends of Jeremiah. This Pashur, son of Melchiah, is a different man from the Pashur son of Immer who had Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks in the previous chapter.
21:2
"Ask the LORD about this" translates a set phrase for formally consulting a prophet to obtain an oracle, the standard way a king sought a divine answer before or during a war. "Nebuchadrezzar" is a spelling of the name closer to the original Babylonian form; it is the same king usually spelled "Nebuchadnezzar" elsewhere. The King James "that he may go up from us" is an idiom for an army breaking off a siege and marching away, which is what the rendering means by "pull back."
21:4
The Chaldeans were the ruling people of Babylon at this time; "Chaldean" and "Babylonian" are used interchangeably in this book. A besieging army camped outside the city wall and cut it off, waiting for hunger and disease to do the work. The Hebrew of the last line is compressed and can be read two ways: that God will gather the defenders' own weapons into the middle of the city, or that he will gather the Babylonian forces there.
21:5
"With my hand stretched out and my arm strong" is the fixed phrase used throughout the Hebrew Bible for God rescuing Israel out of Egypt. Here the same words are aimed at Jerusalem itself, the point of the wording is that the rescue language has been reversed.
21:6
"Plague" here renders a word for any deadly epidemic, not one specific disease. Sword, famine, and plague appear together repeatedly in Jeremiah as the three standard consequences of a siege.
21:7
"Hand over into the hand of" is the ordinary Hebrew idiom for putting someone in another's power, with no gesture implied. "His officials" translates a word literally meaning "his servants," which in a royal setting means court officers and staff, not slaves.
21:8
"The way of life and the way of death" echoes the wording of Deuteronomy, where Israel is offered a choice between two roads at the moment of committing to the covenant. Jeremiah is using that familiar formula, but the choice he attaches to it is a strictly practical one: stay in the city or walk out and surrender.
21:9
Deserting to the enemy during a siege was treason, punishable by death, which is why this instruction was so inflammatory. The last clause translates a Hebrew idiom, literally "his life shall be to him as spoil", meaning a deserter walks away with nothing but his own skin, the way a soldier walks off a battlefield carrying only what he has seized.
21:10
"Set my face against" is an idiom for turning deliberate, settled hostility toward someone, the opposite of the idiom for turning one's face toward a person in favor.
21:11
"The royal family" translates "the house of the king", in Hebrew, "house" covers the dynasty, the household and its officials, and the palace building itself, and all three senses are in play through the rest of this chapter.
21:12
"House of David" means the ruling dynasty descended from David, addressed as a single body. Hearing legal cases was a king's job, and it was done in the morning, at the city gate, before the day's heat, "morning after morning" means both promptly and as a standing routine, not at some special hour. "The one who has been robbed" is a term for anyone stripped of property or rights by force.
21:13
The geography is disputed. The words translated "you who live above the valley, on the rocky flatland" have been understood as Jerusalem itself, perched on rock above the ravines that flank it, and also as a taunt aimed at some other stronghold. The two questions quoted back are the boast of people who think their site cannot be stormed.
21:14
"Your forest" may be literal woodland, or may be a jab at the royal palace complex, known as "the House of the Forest of Lebanon" because of its rows of cedar pillars. Either reading works, and the Hebrew keeps both open.

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