For Teaching

Jeremiah 26: What the Passage Says

89 claims across 24 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 26 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

At the start of Jehoiakim's reign, the LORD sends Jeremiah to stand in the temple courtyard and tell everyone who comes to worship that if they will not listen and obey, the temple will become like Shiloh and the city will be cursed among the nations. The priests, the prophets, and the crowd seize him and demand his death, but the officials and the people hear his defense and rule that he does not deserve to die. Elders remind the assembly that Micah said similar things in Hezekiah's day and was not killed, while another account tells how King Jehoiakim had the prophet Urijah brought back from Egypt and executed. The chapter ends with Ahikam son of Shaphan protecting Jeremiah from being handed over to the people.

Claim by Claim

26:1
- In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came from the LORD.
- Jehoiakim was the son of Josiah.
- Jehoiakim was king of Judah.
26:2
- The LORD said this.
- The LORD commanded Jeremiah to stand in the court of the LORD's house.
- The LORD commanded Jeremiah to speak to all the cities of Judah that come to worship in the LORD's house.
- The LORD commanded Jeremiah to speak all the words the LORD commanded him to speak to them.
- The LORD commanded Jeremiah not to leave out a single word.
26:3
- The LORD said that perhaps they would listen.
- The LORD said that perhaps each man would turn from his evil way.
- The LORD said that if they turned, he would relent of the disaster he was planning to do to them.
- The LORD said he was planning that disaster because of the evil of their deeds.
26:4
- The LORD commanded Jeremiah to say to them what follows.
- The LORD said this.
- The LORD set a condition: if they would not listen to him.
- The LORD said listening to him meant walking in his law.
- The LORD said he had set his law before them.
26:5
- The LORD set a further condition: if they would not listen to the words of his servants the prophets.
- The LORD said he was sending the prophets to them.
- The LORD said he sent the prophets persistently, rising early to send them.
- The LORD said they had not listened.
26:6
- The LORD said that then he would make this house like Shiloh.
- The LORD said he would make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.
26:7
- The priests heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD.
- The prophets heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD.
- All the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the LORD.
26:8
- Jeremiah finished speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak to all the people.
- The priests and the prophets and all the people seized Jeremiah.
- They said to him that he would surely die.
26:9
- They asked Jeremiah why he had prophesied in the name of the LORD.
- They quoted his prophecy that this house would be like Shiloh.
- They quoted his prophecy that this city would be desolate without an inhabitant.
- All the people gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.
26:10
- The officials of Judah heard these words.
- The officials went up from the king's house to the house of the LORD.
- The officials sat down at the entrance of the New Gate of the LORD's house.
26:11
- The priests and the prophets spoke to the officials and to all the people.
- They said that this man deserved a sentence of death.
- They said the reason was that he had prophesied against this city.
- They said the people had heard it with their own ears.
26:12
- Jeremiah spoke to all the officials and to all the people.
- Jeremiah said the LORD had sent him to prophesy against this house and against this city.
- Jeremiah said the words he prophesied were all the words they had heard.
26:13
- Jeremiah told them to amend their ways and their deeds.
- Jeremiah told them to obey the voice of the LORD their God.
- Jeremiah said the LORD would relent of the disaster he had pronounced against them.
26:14
- Jeremiah said he was in their hand.
- Jeremiah told them to do to him whatever seemed good and right in their eyes.
26:15
- Jeremiah told them to know for certain what follows.
- Jeremiah said that if they put him to death, they would bring innocent blood upon themselves.
- Jeremiah said they would bring innocent blood upon this city.
- Jeremiah said they would bring innocent blood upon the inhabitants of the city.
- Jeremiah said that in truth the LORD had sent him to them.
- Jeremiah said the LORD sent him to speak all these words in their ears.
26:16
- The officials and all the people spoke to the priests and to the prophets.
- They said this man did not deserve a sentence of death.
- They said the reason was that he had spoken to them in the name of the LORD their God.
26:17
- Certain men from among the elders of the land rose up.
- They spoke to all the assembly of the people.
26:18
- Micah the Morashtite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah.
- Hezekiah was king of Judah.
- Micah spoke to all the people of Judah.
- Micah said the LORD of hosts had spoken.
- Micah said Zion would be plowed like a field.
- Micah said Jerusalem would become heaps of ruins.
- Micah said the mountain of the house would become wooded high places.
26:19
- The elders asked whether Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put Micah to death.
- The elders asked whether Hezekiah did not fear the LORD.
- The elders said Hezekiah entreated the favor of the LORD.
- The elders said the LORD relented of the disaster he had pronounced against them.
- The elders said that they themselves were bringing great evil upon their own lives.
26:20
- There was also a man prophesying in the name of the LORD.
- That man was Urijah son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim.
- Urijah prophesied against this city and against this land.
- Urijah's prophecy matched all the words of Jeremiah.
26:21
- King Jehoiakim and all his mighty men and all the officials heard Urijah's words.
- The king sought to put Urijah to death.
- Urijah heard of it.
- Urijah was afraid.
- Urijah fled.
- Urijah went into Egypt.
26:22
- King Jehoiakim sent men into Egypt.
- The men sent were Elnathan son of Achbor and certain men with him.
26:23
- They brought Urijah out of Egypt.
- They brought Urijah to King Jehoiakim.
- Jehoiakim struck Urijah down with the sword.
- Jehoiakim threw Urijah's corpse into the graves of the common people.
26:24
- The hand of Ahikam son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah.
- Because of this, Jeremiah was not handed over to the people to be put to death.

Words Worth Explaining

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

26:1: Jehoiakim was made king of Judah in about 609 BC by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, who had removed Jehoiakim's brother after only three months; their father Josiah had just been killed in battle. "The beginning of the reign" is close to a technical term for a new king's first partial year on the throne. Judah at this point was the small surviving southern kingdom, ruled from Jerusalem and paying tribute to Egypt. Where LORD appears in capitals it stands in for the personal name of God, which the Hebrew text writes but Jewish tradition does not pronounce aloud.
26:2: "The LORD's house" is the temple in Jerusalem. Its courtyard was the open public area outside the building itself, where ordinary worshipers gathered; only priests went inside. People came in from the towns of Judah for the festivals, so the courtyard was the one place a speaker could reach the whole country at once.
26:3: The Hebrew word translated "repent me of" does not mean regret over sin; it means to change course, to pull back from an announced intention. Note also that the same Hebrew word (ra'ah) is used three times over in the verse, for the people's "evil way," the "evil" God plans to do, and the "evil of their doings", one word covering both wickedness and the disaster that answers it. English needs two words where Hebrew uses one, and the echo is lost.
26:4: The law was the teaching God gave Israel through Moses, written in the first books of the Bible. It covered worship, courts, farming, and how people treated each other.
26:5: "Rising up early, and sending them" is a Hebrew idiom, common in Jeremiah, meaning to do something persistently and from the start, sending message after message. It says nothing about the hour of the morning.
26:6: Shiloh, about twenty miles north of Jerusalem, was the sanctuary where the tent-shrine and the ark stood for generations before the temple was built. It was destroyed, apparently by the Philistines around 1050 BC, and never recovered. For Jeremiah's hearers it was the standing example of a holy place that God had let fall. To say the temple would become like Shiloh was the most inflammatory thing he could have said.
26:7: These "prophets" are not Jeremiah's colleagues but his rivals: professional prophets attached to the temple staff alongside the priests, who spoke for a living and whose message was that the temple guaranteed the city's safety.
26:8: "Thou shalt surely die" is not a prediction but a formal verdict, the standard Hebrew wording of a death sentence.
26:9: The charge is not that Jeremiah spoke, but that he claimed the words were God's. Israelite law made speaking falsely in the LORD's name a capital offense (Deuteronomy 18:20), which is what gives the crowd a legal footing for demanding his death.
26:10: "Princes" in 1611 English means officials or nobles of the royal administration, not the king's sons. They come from the palace to the temple and "sit down" in a gateway, the gate of a city or sanctuary was where cases were heard, so sitting there means convening as a court. What follows in verses 11–16 is a trial: the priests and prophets act as prosecutors, Jeremiah speaks in his own defense, and the officials and the assembled people give the verdict.
26:11: This is a courtroom scene with three parties: the priests and temple prophets act as prosecutors, the royal officials act as judges, and the assembled people are the public whose reaction carries weight. "Worthy to die" is the formal demand for a death sentence.
26:14: "Meet" in 1611 English means fitting or proper. Jeremiah is not pleading; he is formally conceding that the court has power over his life.
26:15: Blood shed unjustly was thought of as leaving a stain that clung to the killers and to the whole community and the ground itself until it was answered for. Jeremiah is warning the court that executing him would not remove their problem but add a debt the city would have to pay.
26:17: The "elders of the land" were the senior heads of landholding families, men with recognized standing to speak in a legal assembly. They are a third party here, separate from both the temple officials and the royal court.
26:18: Micah of Moresheth is the prophet whose book stands in the Bible; the words quoted are Micah 3:12. He spoke in the reign of Hezekiah, roughly a hundred years before this trial, so the elders are citing a precedent from living memory of the records. "Zion" is the hill Jerusalem stood on, used as a name for the city and especially for the temple mount. "The LORD of hosts" means the LORD commanding armies, heavenly ones, and Israel's. "The high places of a forest" is 1611 English for a bare wooded height: Micah's picture is of the temple hill reduced to scrub, farmland and rubble.
26:19: "Besought the LORD" translates a Hebrew phrase that literally means to soften someone's face, to appeal for favor from a person with power over you. "Procure great evil against our souls" is 1611 English for bringing serious harm on ourselves; "souls" here means lives or selves, not an immaterial part of a person. The elders' argument is legal and practical: the king a century ago took a prophet's threat seriously instead of killing him, and the threat was withdrawn.
26:20: Urijah (Uriah) is otherwise unknown. Kirjath-jearim was a town about nine miles west of Jerusalem. This second case is told against the first: the elders' precedent showed a prophet spared, and this one shows what the present king does instead.
26:21: Egypt was not a random refuge. At this date Judah was an Egyptian dependency and Jehoiakim owed his throne to Pharaoh Neco, so a fugitive who crossed the border was still within reach of a king Egypt had installed, which is why the extradition in the next verse succeeds.
26:22: Elnathan son of Achbor was a senior figure at Jehoiakim's court; he appears again in Jeremiah 36 among the officials who urge the king not to burn Jeremiah's scroll. Sending a man of that rank shows how seriously the king pursued Urijah.
26:23: Not a family tomb but a public burial ground for those without one. Being denied burial with one's ancestors was itself part of the punishment, a deliberate disgrace extended past death.
26:24: "The hand of X was with Y" is a Hebrew idiom for protection and backing, not physical contact. Ahikam belonged to the most powerful bureaucratic family in Judah: his father Shaphan was Josiah's secretary of state, and his son Gedaliah was later appointed governor by the Babylonians. Jeremiah survives this chapter because of court politics, not because the verdict settled anything.

Read Jeremiah 26