Home

For Teaching

Jeremiah 42: What the Passage Says

78 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 42 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

After the fall of Jerusalem, the army commanders and the people who are left ask Jeremiah to pray for guidance, and they promise to obey whatever answer comes. Ten days later Jeremiah reports it: if they stay in the land, God will build them up and protect them from the king of Babylon; if they go to Egypt to escape war and hunger, the sword, famine, and disease will follow them there and they will die. Jeremiah tells them they were not honest when they asked, warns them not to go, and says they have already refused to obey.

Claim by Claim

  1. 42:1
    • All the captains of the forces came near.
    • Johanan son of Kareah came near.
    • Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah came near.
    • All the people, from the least to the greatest, came near.
  2. 42:2
    • They spoke to Jeremiah the prophet.
    • They asked that their plea be accepted before him.
    • They asked Jeremiah to pray for them to the LORD his God.
    • They asked him to pray for all this remnant.
    • They said that only a few of them were left out of many.
    • They said that Jeremiah could see this with his own eyes.
  3. 42:3
    • They asked that the LORD his God show them the way in which they should walk.
    • They asked that the LORD his God show them the thing they should do.
  4. 42:4
    • Jeremiah the prophet answered them.
    • Jeremiah said he had heard them.
    • Jeremiah said he would pray to the LORD their God according to their words.
    • Jeremiah said he would declare to them whatever the LORD answered them.
    • Jeremiah said he would keep nothing back from them.
  5. 42:5
    • They said to Jeremiah that the LORD should be a true and faithful witness against them.
    • They said this would hold if they did not act according to every word that the LORD his God sent him to give them.
  6. 42:6
    • They said that whether the word was good or bad, they would obey the voice of the LORD their God.
    • They said they were sending Jeremiah to the LORD their God.
    • They said their obedience was so that it might go well with them.
    • They said it would go well with them because they would obey the voice of the LORD their God.
  7. 42:7
    • After ten days had passed, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.
  8. 42:8
    • Jeremiah called Johanan son of Kareah.
    • Jeremiah called all the captains of the forces who were with him.
    • Jeremiah called all the people, from the least to the greatest.
  9. 42:9
    • Jeremiah spoke to them.
    • Jeremiah said this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says.
    • Jeremiah said they had sent him to the LORD to present their plea before him.
  10. 42:10
    • The LORD said that if they would indeed remain in this land, he would build them up and not tear them down.
    • The LORD said he would plant them and not uproot them.
    • The LORD said he relented of the disaster he had done to them.
  11. 42:11
    • The LORD told them not to be afraid of the king of Babylon.
    • The LORD said they were afraid of the king of Babylon.
    • The LORD repeated that they should not be afraid of him.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
    • The LORD said he was with them to save them.
    • The LORD said he was with them to deliver them from the king of Babylon's hand.
  12. 42:12
    • The LORD said he would grant them compassion.
    • The LORD said that the king of Babylon would have compassion on them.
    • The LORD said that the king of Babylon would return them to their own land.
  13. 42:13
    • The LORD spoke of the case in which they say they will not remain in this land.
    • Saying this would be a refusal to obey the voice of the LORD their God.
  14. 42:14
    • The LORD spoke of their saying, No, we will go into the land of Egypt.
    • They said that in Egypt they would see no war.
    • They said that in Egypt they would not hear the sound of the ram's horn.
    • They said that in Egypt they would not hunger for bread.
    • They said that they would dwell in Egypt.
  15. 42:15
    • Jeremiah told the remnant of Judah to hear the word of the LORD.
    • This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says.
    • The LORD spoke of the case in which they are wholly determined to enter Egypt and go to sojourn there.
  16. 42:16
    • The LORD said the sword they feared would overtake them there in the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD said the famine they dreaded would follow close after them there in Egypt.
    • The LORD said they would die there.
  17. 42:17
    • The LORD said all the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to sojourn there would die by the sword, by famine, and by plague.
    • The LORD said none of them would remain or escape from the disaster he would bring upon them.
  18. 42:18
    • This is what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says.
    • The LORD said his anger and his wrath had been poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
    • The LORD said his wrath would likewise be poured out on them when they entered Egypt.
    • The LORD said they would become an object of cursing.
    • The LORD said they would become an object of horror.
    • The LORD said they would become a curse.
    • The LORD said they would become a reproach.
    • The LORD said they would never see this place again.
  19. 42:19
    • Jeremiah said the LORD had spoken concerning the remnant of Judah.
    • The LORD's word was that they should not go into Egypt.
    • Jeremiah told them to know for certain that he had warned them that day.
  20. 42:20
    • Jeremiah said they had gone astray, or had deceived themselves, at the cost of their own lives.
    • Jeremiah said they had sent him to the LORD their God.
    • They had told him to pray for them to the LORD their God.
    • They had told him to declare to them everything the LORD their God said.
    • They had said they would do it.
  21. 42:21
    • Jeremiah said he had declared it to them that day.
    • Jeremiah said they had not obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.
    • Jeremiah said they had not obeyed anything for which the LORD sent him to them.
  22. 42:22
    • Jeremiah told them to know for certain that they would die by the sword, by famine, and by plague.
    • Jeremiah said they would die in the place where they desired to go and sojourn.

Words Worth Explaining

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

42:1
The scene follows the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC and the murder of Gedaliah, the governor Babylon had installed over the survivors. The people speaking here are the remnant left in Judah, camped near Bethlehem and already moving south toward Egypt. The "army commanders" led surviving bands of Judean fighters rather than a standing army. Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah appears as Azariah son of Hoshaiah in chapter 43:2 and in the ancient Greek version of Jeremiah; the two names may belong to the same man.
42:2
Notice the exact wording: they say "the LORD thy God," your God, not ours. Jeremiah answers in verse 4 the same way, "the LORD your God," and only when the people swear the oath in verse 6 do they switch to "the LORD our God." The Hebrew keeps this back-and-forth carefully, and it is worth watching as the chapter goes on.
42:3
They were not asking about a road. They wanted to know what God wanted them to do next.
42:5
Calling on God as witness was the standard way of swearing a binding oath: the witness is understood to enforce the promise, not merely observe it. The Hebrew preposition can be read either as "between us" (a witness to the agreement) or "against us" (a witness who will testify if we break it), and translations divide on it.
42:6
"Whether it be good, or whether it be evil" does not mean a morally good or morally wicked answer. It is a Hebrew way of saying "whatever it turns out to be," pleasant or unpleasant, welcome or unwelcome. They are promising to obey even if the answer is not what they hoped for.
42:7
The ten-day gap is recorded as a plain fact of the process. A prophet was not thought to produce an answer on demand; waiting for a word to come was normal, and the delay left the group camped and undecided for over a week.
42:10
"Build" and "plant" set against "tear down" and "pull up" are a fixed pair of images in Jeremiah for the making and unmaking of a nation, first used of Jeremiah's own commission in chapter 1:10. The King James "I repent me of the evil" uses two words that have shifted since 1611: the verb means to change course or relent, not to feel guilt, and "evil" here is the Hebrew word for harm or disaster, meaning the calamity itself rather than moral wickedness.
42:11
The king of Babylon is Nebuchadnezzar. Their fear is specific: the governor Babylon had appointed over them had just been assassinated by a member of Judah's royal family, and they expected Babylonian reprisals to fall on everyone left in the land.
42:12
The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean he will let them go back to their own land (which would refer to people already deported or scattered) or that he will let them settle back on their own soil undisturbed. Translators differ.
42:14
The instrument is the shofar, a ram's horn. It was not used for music but as a signal, and the sound people dreaded was its use as an alarm warning that an army was coming. Egypt was the obvious refuge: it lay outside Babylonian control, was reachable in a matter of days, and already held settled communities of Judeans.
42:15
"LORD of Armies" (the King James "LORD of hosts") renders a title meaning commander of the heavenly armies, an ancient name for God as a warrior at the head of his forces. To "live there as foreigners" translates a word for a resident alien: someone permitted to settle in a country without owning land or holding the rights of a native, and so dependent on local goodwill for protection. The King James "set your faces" is a Hebrew idiom for fixed determination.
42:16
The sword means war and fighting. A sword was the long, sharp knife soldiers carried.
42:17
Sword, famine, and disease form a set phrase repeated throughout Jeremiah. They are the three linked killers of ancient warfare: the attacking army, the starvation caused by a siege cutting off food, and the epidemics that spread among people crowded together with the dead unburied.
42:18
This describes a curse formula. When a name became "a curse," people used it as the worst thing they could wish on an enemy, "may you end up like them." The four terms together mean the group's fate would become the standard byword for ruin, spoken of with horror and used as an insult.
42:19
"Warned" here has a formal, legal weight: testimony delivered publicly in front of witnesses, so that afterward no one can claim not to have known.
42:20
The King James "ye dissembled in your hearts" uses a word that has since dropped out of ordinary English; it means to act with concealed intent. The Hebrew verb is ambiguous and can mean either that they deceived themselves or that they led themselves astray at the cost of their own lives.

Read Jeremiah 42