For Teaching

Jeremiah 44: What the Passage Says

144 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 44 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jeremiah delivers the LORD's message to the Jews living in Egypt, at Migdol, Tahpanhes, Noph, and Pathros: they saw Judah left in ruins for burning incense to other gods, and they are doing the same thing in Egypt. The message says those who went to Egypt will be destroyed by sword, hunger, and disease, and only a few will escape to return to Judah. The people answer that they will not listen, and will keep their vows to the Queen of Heaven, since they had plenty of food when they did. Jeremiah replies that this is exactly why Judah fell, and gives a sign: Pharaoh Hophra will be handed over to his enemies, as Zedekiah was handed over to Nebuchadnezzar.

Claim by Claim

44:1
- A word came to Jeremiah.
- The word concerned all the Jews living in the land of Egypt.
- Those Jews were living at Migdol.
- Those Jews were living at Tahpanhes.
- Those Jews were living at Memphis.
- Those Jews were living in the land of Pathros.
44:2
- The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
- The LORD said the people had seen all the disaster he brought upon Jerusalem.
- The LORD said he brought that disaster upon all the cities of Judah as well.
- The LORD said those cities are a ruin this day.
- The LORD said no one lives in them.
44:3
- The disaster came because of the wickedness the people had committed.
- They committed that wickedness to provoke the LORD to anger.
- They went to burn incense to other gods.
- They went to serve other gods.
- Those gods were not known by them.
- Those gods were not known by the people addressed.
- Those gods were not known by their fathers.
44:4
- The LORD sent to them all his servants the prophets.
- The LORD sent the prophets persistently, rising early to send them.
- The prophets said: Do not do this abominable thing.
- The LORD said he hates that thing.
44:5
- They did not listen.
- They did not incline their ear.
- They did not turn from their wickedness.
- They did not stop burning incense to other gods.
44:6
- The LORD's fury and anger were poured out.
- His fury and anger burned in the cities of Judah.
- His fury and anger burned in the streets of Jerusalem.
- Those places became a ruin and a desolation.
- They remain so at this day.
44:7
- The LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke again.
- The LORD asked why they commit this great evil against their own lives.
- Their evil cuts off from them man and woman.
- Their evil cuts off from them child and nursing infant.
- They are cut off from the midst of Judah.
- The result is that no remnant is left to them.
44:8
- They provoke the LORD to anger with the works of their hands.
- They burn incense to other gods in the land of Egypt.
- They have gone into Egypt to live there as sojourners.
- The result is that they cut themselves off.
- The result is that they become a curse among all the nations of the earth.
- The result is that they become a reproach among all the nations of the earth.
44:9
- The LORD asked whether they have forgotten the wickedness of their fathers.
- He asked whether they have forgotten the wickedness of the kings of Judah.
- He asked whether they have forgotten the wickedness of the kings' wives.
- He asked whether they have forgotten their own wickedness.
- He asked whether they have forgotten the wickedness of their wives.
- That wickedness was committed in the land of Judah.
- That wickedness was committed in the streets of Jerusalem.
44:10
- They have not been humbled to this day.
- They have not feared.
- They have not walked in the LORD's law.
- They have not walked in the LORD's statutes.
- The LORD set that law and those statutes before them and before their fathers.
44:11
- The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
- The LORD is setting his face against them for harm.
- The LORD is setting his face to cut off all Judah.
44:12
- The LORD will take the remnant of Judah.
- That remnant set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there.
- They will all come to an end in the land of Egypt.
- They will fall by the sword.
- They will be consumed by famine.
- From the least to the greatest they will die by sword and by famine.
- They will become an execration.
- They will become an object of horror.
- They will become a curse.
- They will become a reproach.
44:13
- The LORD will punish those living in the land of Egypt.
- He will punish them as he punished Jerusalem.
- He will punish them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.
44:14
- None of the remnant of Judah who went to sojourn in the land of Egypt will escape or survive.
- None will survive to return to the land of Judah.
- They long to return to the land of Judah and live there.
- None of them will return except fugitives who escape.
44:15
- All the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods answered Jeremiah.
- All the women standing by answered as well.
- Those women were a great assembly.
- All the people living in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered as well.
44:16
- They said they would not listen to Jeremiah.
- The word Jeremiah spoke to them was spoken in the name of the LORD.
44:17
- They said they would certainly do everything that had gone out of their own mouth.
- They said they would burn incense to the queen of heaven.
- They said they would pour out drink offerings to her.
- They said they had done this before, they and their fathers, their kings, and their officials.
- They had done this in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.
- They said that then they had plenty of food.
- They said that then they were well off.
- They said that then they saw no disaster.
44:18
- They said that since they stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, they have lacked everything.
- They said they have been consumed by the sword and by famine.
44:19
- The women asked whether they made cakes for the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her without their husbands' involvement.
- The purpose of the cakes is stated ambiguously: either to make an image of her or to portray her form.
- They burned incense to the queen of heaven.
- They poured out drink offerings to her.
44:20
- Jeremiah then spoke to all the people.
- He spoke to the men.
- He spoke to the women.
- He spoke to all the people who had given him that answer.
44:21
- Jeremiah asked whether the LORD did not remember the incense they burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.
- That incense was burned by them, their fathers, their kings, their officials, and the people of the land.
- Jeremiah asked whether it did not come into the LORD's mind.
44:22
- The LORD could no longer bear it.
- He could not bear it because of the evil of their deeds.
- He could not bear it because of the abominations they committed.
- Their land became a desolation.
- Their land became an object of horror.
- Their land became a curse.
- Their land is without an inhabitant.
- This is so at this day.
44:23
- They burned incense.
- They sinned against the LORD.
- They did not obey the voice of the LORD.
- They did not walk in his law, his statutes, or his testimonies.
- Therefore this disaster has befallen them, as at this day.
44:24
- Jeremiah said this to all the people and to all the women.
- He told them to hear the word of the LORD.
- He addressed all Judah who are in the land of Egypt.
44:25
- The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, spoke.
- The LORD said they and their wives have spoken with their mouths.
- The LORD said they have fulfilled with their hands what they said.
- They said they would surely perform the vows they had vowed.
- Those vows were to burn incense to the queen of heaven.
- Those vows were to pour out drink offerings to her.
- The LORD told the women to go ahead and confirm their vows.
- The LORD told the women to go ahead and perform their vows.
44:26
- Jeremiah told all Judah living in the land of Egypt to hear the word of the LORD.
- The LORD has sworn by his great name.
- The LORD swore that his name will no longer be invoked by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt.
- No man of Judah in Egypt will say, 'As the Lord GOD lives.'
44:27
- The LORD is watching over them for harm and not for good.
- All the men of Judah in the land of Egypt will come to an end by the sword and by famine.
- They will be consumed until they are finished.
44:28
- Those who escape the sword will return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah.
- Those who return will be few in number.
- All the remnant of Judah who went into the land of Egypt to sojourn there will know whose word stands, the LORD's or theirs.
44:29
- The LORD gives them a sign.
- The sign is that the LORD will punish them in this place.
- The purpose of the sign is that they may know his words will surely stand against them for harm.
44:30
- The LORD spoke.
- The LORD will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies.
- The LORD will give him into the hand of those who seek his life.
- The LORD gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
- Nebuchadnezzar was Zedekiah's enemy and sought his life.

Words Worth Explaining

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

44:1: Migdol and Tahpanhes were towns in the north-eastern Nile delta, near Egypt's frontier; Noph is Memphis, just south of modern Cairo; Pathros means Upper Egypt, the southern stretch of the country. Together they cover Jewish settlements the whole length of Egypt. These Jews were refugees who had fled south after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, taking Jeremiah with them against his advice (chapters 42-43).
44:2: "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing aloud. "LORD of Armies" (older versions: "LORD of hosts") pictures him as the commander of armies, heavenly and earthly. The disaster referred to is the Babylonian capture and burning of Jerusalem in 587/586 BC, within living memory of the people being addressed.
44:3: Burning incense meant burning aromatic gum resin to produce fragrant smoke, a standard act of worship all over the ancient Near East. The Hebrew verb used here is broader than the English word suggests and can cover making offerings generally, not only incense.
44:4: "Again and again I sent them" translates a Hebrew idiom that literally reads "rising early and sending" - the picture of someone getting up at dawn, day after day, to do something.
44:7: To be "cut off" meant to have your whole family line end, with no children or grandchildren left to carry your name. To an Israelite family that was one of the worst things imaginable.
44:8: To "become a name people use when they curse" means their fate would become proverbial: someone wishing harm on an enemy would say "may you end up like them." The same idea appears in verses 12 and 22.
44:9: The wives of the kings are singled out because royal women, especially the king's mother, held recognized influence at Judah's court, and Israel's histories repeatedly blame particular queens for promoting the worship of other gods.
44:10: "Law," "rules" and (in verse 23) "instructions" translate three overlapping Hebrew terms - torah, statutes, testimonies - for the body of instruction Israel understood as given through Moses. They are piled up here for weight rather than to distinguish three separate things.
44:11: "Set my face against" is an idiom for fixed, deliberate intent: turning to face someone with a settled purpose, here a hostile one.
44:12: "Remnant" is the standing term for what was left of Judah after Babylon's invasions and deportations: a small surviving group in a mostly emptied land. Much of the book of Jeremiah turns on what happens to them.
44:13: Sword, hunger and disease form a standard trio in Jeremiah for the ways people die in a war: killed in the fighting, starved during a siege, or carried off by the epidemics that follow both.
44:17: The Queen of Heaven was a goddess worshiped in Judah in Jeremiah's day, usually identified with the Mesopotamian Ishtar or the Canaanite Astarte - a figure associated with love, fertility, and the planet Venus. A drink offering (libation) meant pouring out wine or another liquid on the ground or an altar as a gift to a deity; it was a normal part of worship in the region, and was also offered to the God of Israel.
44:18: The point in time they mean is probably King Josiah's reforms around 622 BC, which shut down the worship of other gods across Judah. From where these refugees stand, the nation's collapse started right after that, so they read the last forty years as the goddess punishing them for dropping her. Jeremiah reads exactly the same stretch of history the opposite way.
44:19: The cakes were small baked loaves, probably pressed in a mold that carried the goddess's image or shape. The women's question about their husbands is a legal point, not a domestic one: under Israelite law (Numbers 30) a husband could cancel a vow his wife had made, so if he knew and said nothing, her vow stood - and he shared responsibility for it.
44:21: "The people of the land" is a set term in these books for the free, land-owning citizens of Judah, as distinct from the king, his officials, and the priests.
44:23: The King James lists his "law," his "statutes," and his "testimonies." These are three words for one thing: the instructions God gave Israel to live by.
44:25: A vow was a binding promise made to a deity, normally undertaking to give something in return for help; Israelite law treated a vow, once spoken, as a debt that had to be paid. Jeremiah's "Very well, you will certainly carry out your promises" is bitter irony: the Hebrew is a command - go ahead, then, keep your vows - daring them to find out what follows.
44:26: "As surely as the Lord GOD lives" was the standard opening formula of a solemn oath, the ancient equivalent of swearing on something unbreakable. In the printed form "Lord GOD," the small-capital GOD again marks the personal divine name. For that name to disappear from Judean mouths in Egypt means the community that used it will no longer be there to say it.
44:27: The Hebrew verb behind "watch over" is the same one used at the start of the book, where God says he is watching to see that his word is carried out. The wording that promised fulfillment there is turned here toward harm.
44:28: Verse 14 has already allowed for "a few who escape," and this is that handful. The Hebrew stresses how small the number is; their role in the sentence is to be witnesses back home to which side's words held.
44:29: A "sign" here is a smaller, verifiable event given in advance to guarantee a larger prediction: when the first thing happens on schedule, you know the rest is coming. Verse 30 states what that sign is.
44:30: Pharaoh Hophra (known to Greek writers as Apries) ruled Egypt from about 589 to 570 BC. He lost his throne in an army revolt that put his own general Amasis in power, and was killed a few years afterwards. Zedekiah was the last king of Judah: when Jerusalem fell in 586 BC the Babylonians caught him fleeing, killed his sons in front of him, blinded him, and took him to Babylon. "Nebuchadrezzar" is Jeremiah's usual spelling of the name more often written Nebuchadnezzar, and is closer to the original Babylonian form.

Read Jeremiah 44