Jeremiah 36

the city and the temple from ruin, but he refused to listen. Jeremiah warned him that the royal family and the court officials would not escape judgment and that he would be taken captive to Babylon, where he would die in peace. One act of faith and courage would have saved the city from ruin and the people from slaughter, but Zedekiah was afraid of his counselors (38:1–6) and was only a pawn in their hands.

The treachery of the people (34:8–22). At one point during the siege, Zedekiah and the people made a covenant with the Lord in the temple (v. 15) to free all the Jewish slaves. A calf was slain and then cut in half, and the priests, officers, and people walked between the halves as a sign that they would obey the terms of the covenant (vv. 18–19; Gen. 15:17). In so doing, they were agreeing to free their Jewish slaves or be willing to suffer what the calf had suffered.

According to the law of Moses, a Jewish master had to free his Jewish slaves at the end of seven years of service (Ex. 21:1–11; Deut. 15:12–18). The Jews hadn’t done this for years, and now they decided it was a good thing to do. Why? Perhaps they felt that God would honor their obedience and defeat the enemy in some miraculous way, as He had done for Hezekiah (Isa. 36—37). Instead of believing God’s Word and submitting to Babylon, the Jews tried to bargain with the Lord and “bribe” Him into helping their cause.

Of course, there were probably some practical considerations behind this covenant. If the slaves were free, they’d have to care for themselves; their masters wouldn’t have to feed them or care for them. Also freemen were more likely to want to fight the enemy and maintain their newfound freedom. Whatever the reason, the effects of the covenant didn’t last very long, for when there was a lull in the siege and Nebuchadnezzar went off to confront the Egyptian army (Jer. 34:21–22; 37:5–11), the masters all forced their slaves back into servitude. The solemn covenant made in the temple meant nothing.

Before we condemn these dishonest masters too much, let’s admit that God’s people often make promises to the Lord when they’re in tough times, only to repudiate them when things get better. In my pastoral ministry, I’ve heard more than one suffering saint on a hospital bed promise to be the best Christian in the church if only God would give healing, and when He granted the request, he or she immediately forgot Him.

Jeremiah took advantage of this event to preach a sermon about Judah’s treachery against the Lord (34:12–22). God had set the Israelites free from Egyptian bondage and had made a covenant with them to be their God, but they broke the covenant and returned to idolatry. Now they broke the law by enslaving their own people unjustly. By what they did in the temple and the way they treated their fellow Jews, they profaned the name of the Lord. They hadn’t really proclaimed freedom to their slaves, but God would proclaim “freedom” to the nation— freedom “to fall by the sword, plague, and famine” (v. 17 niv). The prophet predicted a terrible death for all the treacherous people who had participated in the covenant, and his predictions came true (vv. 19–20).

The integrity of the Rechabites (35:1–19). This event occurred eighteen years earlier, during the reign of Jehoiakim (609–597 BC). Jeremiah probably put the account at this point in the book for the sake of contrast: The people of Judah dishonored the Lord by disobeying His law, while the Rechabites honored their father by obeying his command.

The Rechabites were a clan of nomadic people loyal to their ancestor Jonadab (2 Kings 10:15–23), who commanded them not to live in houses, not to have farms or vineyards, and not to drink wine. They were related to Moses’ father-in-law (Judg. 1:16; 4:11) and for over 250 years had composed a small “separatist” clan in the nation. Because of the Babylonian invasion, they had forsaken their tents and moved into Jerusalem.

God didn’t ask Jeremiah to serve the Rechabites wine in order to tempt them, because God doesn’t tempt us (James 1:13–15). This was another action sermon to give Jeremiah an opportunity to tell the leaders of Judah how unfaithful they had been to God’s covenant. It wasn’t wrong for the Jewish people to drink wine so long as they didn’t get drunk, but it was wrong for the Rechabites to drink wine because they had made a commitment not to drink it. God didn’t commend these men for their personal standards but for their faithfulness to their father’s command.

The message to the nation was clear. If the command of a mere man, Jonadab, was respected and obeyed by his family for over two centuries, why didn’t the people of Israel and Judah obey the command of Almighty God—a command that the prophets had repeated over and over again? If a family tradition was preserved with such dedication, why was the very law of God treated with such disrespect? Obeying Jonadab’s words had only a limited and temporal significance, but disobeying God’s Word had eternal consequences!

How often God’s people are put to shame by the devotion and discipline of people who don’t even know the Lord but who are intensely loyal to their family, their religion, or their personal pursuits. Even people who want nothing to do with the Word of God can be loyal to traditions and man-made codes. If Christians were putting into their spiritual walk the kind of discipline that athletes put into their chosen sport, the church would be pulsating with revival life.

The fourth year of Jehoiakim was 605 BC, the year of the fateful Battle of Carchemish when Pharaoh Necho defeated King Josiah and made Judah a vassal to Egypt (Jer. 46:2; 2 Chron. 35:20–27). Jehoiakim had gotten his throne only because Egypt had deposed his brother Jehoahaz. Jeremiah had been ministering for twentythree years, and now God commanded him to write his messages in a scroll so they would be permanent and could be read by others. Note that his messages dealt with Israel, Judah, and all the nations, and when he wrote the second scroll, he added other material (Jer. 36:32). The first forty-five chapters of the book of Jeremiah focus primarily on Israel and Judah, while chapters 45 to 51 deal with the other nations in the Near East.

God gives His Word (vv. 1–4, 17–18). This is what theologians call inspiration—that miraculous working of the Holy Spirit through a human writer so that what was written was the divine Word that God wanted recorded (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21). Inspiration is not some kind of “heavenly dictation,” as though God completely bypassed the writer, for the authors of the various books of the Bible have their own distinctive styles and vocabularies. Without making him a robot, God guided Jeremiah in his choice of words; Jeremiah spoke these words to his secretary, Baruch; and Baruch wrote them down in the scroll.

God declares His Word (vv. 5–26). Once again, God used human instruments to proclaim His Word to the people. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). Since Jeremiah wasn’t allowed to go to the temple, he sent Baruch in his place. Baruch waited for a day when there would be a good crowd in the temple; when a fast was proclaimed several months later, probably because of the Babylonian menace, he took advantage of it.

It’s interesting to see how different people responded to the Word of God. There were three public readings of the book, and the first one was to the people in the temple (Jer. 36:10). There’s no record that the crowd responded in any special way. One man, Micaiah, however, became concerned because of what he had heard (v. 11). He was the grandson of Shaphan, the man who read the newly found book of the law to King Josiah (2 Kings 22), so it’s no wonder he had an interest in God’s Word.

Micaiah told the princes about the book, and they asked to hear it, so Baruch read it to them (Jer. 36:12–19). Along with Micaiah, the officials trembled when they heard the Word (v. 16), for they knew that the nation was in great danger. They hid the scroll, told Baruch and Jeremiah to hide, and then went to report to the king that he needed to hear what Jeremiah had written.

The third reading of the scroll was before the king (vv. 21–26) and was done by Jehudi, who may have been one of the scribes. The king treated God’s Word like fuel for the fire! In spite of the remonstrances of three of his officials, the king continued cutting and burning the scroll until it was completely destroyed. The royal attendants who also heard the reading of the scroll showed no fear and thereby encouraged Jehoiakim in his evil deed.

Over the centuries, God’s enemies have tried to destroy the Word of God but have always failed. They forget what Jesus said about the Word: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40: niv; quoted in 1 Peter 1:24–25). Translators and preachers of the Word have been persecuted and martyred, but the truth of God still stands.

God preserves His Word (vv. 27–32). Any king who thinks he can silence God with a knife and a fire has a very high opinion of himself and a very low opinion of God. The Lord simply told Jeremiah to write another scroll, to which He added more material, including a special judgment on King Jehohkim (Jer. 36:27–32). The same God who gives the Word has the power to protect and preserve the Word. The king had tried to destroy the Word, but the Word destroyed him!

King Jehoiakim and his officials would be punished for the disrespect they showed to the divine Word of God. The king would have no dynasty, nor would he have the burial of a king. His son Jehoiachin succeeded him and ruled for only three months, and then Jehoiakim’s brother Zedekiah was made king. If the king and his flattering, servile officers had only feared the Word and obeyed it, they would have saved their nation suffering and ruin, but they preferred to go their own way and ignore God’s voice.