Jeremiah 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs set in front of the temple, one full of very good figs and one full of figs too rotten to eat. This happens after Nebuchadnezzar has taken King Jeconiah, the officials of Judah, and the skilled workers from Jerusalem to Babylon. God explains the vision: the exiles sent to Babylon are like the good figs, and he promises to watch over them, bring them back, and give them a heart to know him. King Zedekiah, his officials, and those left in Judah or living in Egypt are like the bad figs, and God says he will send sword, famine, and plague against them until they are gone from the land.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • The LORD showed Jeremiah a vision.
   • Two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the LORD.
   • Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah into exile.
   • Nebuchadrezzar had also carried away the princes of Judah.
   • Nebuchadrezzar had also carried away the craftsmen and the metalworkers.
   • They were carried away from Jerusalem.
   • Nebuchadrezzar had brought them to Babylon.
   • The vision came after that deportation.
2. 24:2
   • One basket had very good figs.
   • The good figs were like figs that ripen first.
   • The other basket had very bad figs.
   • The bad figs could not be eaten because they were so bad.
3. 24:3
   • The LORD asked Jeremiah what he saw.
   • Jeremiah answered that he saw figs.
   • Jeremiah said the good figs were very good.
   • Jeremiah said the bad figs were very bad.
   • Jeremiah said the bad figs could not be eaten because they were so bad.
4. 24:4
   • The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
   • The word of the LORD told him to speak.
5. 24:5
   • The LORD, the God of Israel, spoke.
   • The LORD said he would regard the exiles of Judah as good, like the good figs.
   • The LORD said he had sent those exiles out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans.
   • The LORD said he sent them there for their good.
6. 24:6
   • The LORD said he would set his eyes on them for good.
   • The LORD said he would bring them back to this land.
   • The LORD said he would build them up.
   • The LORD said he would not tear them down.
   • The LORD said he would plant them.
   • The LORD said he would not uproot them.
7. 24:7
   • The LORD said he would give them a heart to know him.
   • The LORD said they would know that he is the LORD.
   • The LORD said they would be his people.
   • The LORD said he would be their God.
   • The LORD said they would return to him with their whole heart.
8. 24:8
   • The LORD spoke about the bad figs that cannot be eaten because they are so bad.
   • The LORD said he would deal with Zedekiah king of Judah in that way.
   • The LORD said he would deal likewise with Zedekiah's princes.
   • The LORD said he would deal likewise with the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land.
   • The LORD said he would deal likewise with those dwelling in the land of Egypt.
9. 24:9
   • The LORD said he would make them a horror and an evil to all the kingdoms of the earth.
   • The LORD said he would make them a reproach.
   • The LORD said he would make them a proverb.
   • The LORD said he would make them a taunt.
   • The LORD said he would make them a curse.
   • The LORD said this would be so in all the places where he drives them.
10. 24:10
    • The LORD said he would send the sword among them.
    • The LORD said he would send the famine among them.
    • The LORD said he would send the pestilence among them.
    • The LORD said this would continue until they are consumed from the land.
    • The LORD said he had given that land to them and to their fathers.

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1

The deportation described here took place in 597 BC. Nebuchadnezzar (spelled "Nebuchadrezzar" in the King James, closer to the Babylonian form of the name) captured Jerusalem and took its young king Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin, and elsewhere Coniah) to Babylon after a reign of only three months, along with the royal household and the leading men. The "carpenters and smiths" of the King James are craftsmen and metalworkers; removing them stripped the city of the people who could manufacture weapons and fortifications, as well as of its wealth-producing skills. Baskets of produce set down in front of the temple was a familiar sight: that was how the first-picked share of a harvest was formally presented at the sanctuary.

24:2

Fig trees in Judah bore twice. The early crop, ripening around June, was small and prized as a delicacy; the main crop came in late summer. "Figs that are first ripe" means the best fruit of the year. Where the King James calls the others "naughty figs," the word has since weakened: in 1611 "naughty" meant worthless or good-for-nothing, not mischievous.

24:3

"Evil" here means bad in quality, spoiled, not morally wicked. The King James uses the same word for rotten fruit that it uses for wrongdoing.

24:5

"Chaldeans" is the King James term for the people who ruled the Babylonian empire in this period; in Jeremiah it is used interchangeably with "Babylonians."

24:6

"Build and not pull down, plant and not pluck up" reverses the words spoken when Jeremiah was first commissioned as a prophet, where he was set over nations "to root out, and to pull down... to build, and to plant." A reader hearing this in Hebrew would recognize the pairing.

24:7

In Hebrew the "heart" is the seat of thinking, willing and deciding, closer to what modern English calls the mind, rather than the seat of feeling alone. A heart that knows God means an understanding and a loyalty, not a mood.

24:8

Zedekiah was Jeconiah's uncle, installed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar as a client king after Jeconiah was deported. The people "in the land of Egypt" are Judeans who had fled south to escape Babylonian control rather than submit to it, a group Jeremiah returns to repeatedly.

24:9

These are the terms of public disgrace. To become "a proverb" or "a curse" means the nation's name turns into a stock phrase used by others: a byword quoted as the standard example of ruin, and a formula spoken when cursing someone, "may you end up like Judah." The point is not that people will insult them but that their fate will become a fixed expression in other people's speech.

24:10

Sword, famine and pestilence appear together throughout Jeremiah as a set phrase for the three deaths of a besieged city: killed by the attacking army, starved while the walls hold, or carried off by the disease that spread among people penned inside with no clean water. "Pestilence" means epidemic disease, not vermin.