Reflections on Jeremiah 27

Jeremiah 27 (Contemporary English Version)
1. Not long after Zedekiah became king of Judah, the LORD told me: Jeremiah, make a wooden yoke with leather straps, and place it on your neck.
   
2. (SEE 27:1)
   
3. Then send a message to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon. Some officials from these countries are in Jerusalem, meeting with Zedekiah.
   
4. So have them tell their kings that I have said: I am the All-Powerful LORD God of Israel,
   
5. and with my power I created the earth, its people, and all animals. I decide who will rule the earth,
   
6. and I have chosen my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia to rule all nations, including yours. I will even let him rule the wild animals. All nations will be slaves of Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and his grandson. Then many nations will join together, and their kings will be powerful enough to make slaves of the Babylonians.
   
7. (SEE 27:6)
   
8. This yoke stands for the power of King Nebuchadnezzar, and I will destroy any nation that refuses to obey him. Nebuchadnezzar will attack, and many will die in battle or from hunger and disease.
   
9. You might have people in your kingdom who claim they can tell the future by magic or by talking with the dead or by dreams or messages from a god. But don't pay attention if any of them tell you not to obey Nebuchadnezzar.
   
10. If you listen to such lies, I will have you dragged far from your country and killed.
    
11. But if you and your nation are willing to obey Nebuchadnezzar, I will let you stay in your country, and your people will continue to live and work on their farms.
    
12. After I had spoken to the officials from the nearby kingdoms, I went to King Zedekiah and told him the same thing. Then I said: Zedekiah, if you and the people of Judah want to stay alive, you must obey Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians.
    
13. But if you refuse, then you and your people will die from war, hunger, and disease, just as the LORD has warned.
    
14. Your prophets have told you that you don't need to obey Nebuchadnezzar, but don't listen to their lies.
    
15. Those prophets claim to be speaking for the LORD, but he didn't send them. They are lying! If you do what they say, he will have both you and them dragged off to another country and killed. The LORD has spoken.
    
16. When I finished talking to the king, I went to the priests and told them that the LORD had said: Don't listen to the prophets when they say that very soon the Babylonians will return the things they took from my temple. Those prophets are lying!
    
17. If you choose to obey the king of Babylonia, you will live. But if you listen to those prophets, this whole city will be nothing but a pile of rubble.
    
18. If I really had spoken to those prophets, they would know what I am going to do. Then they would be begging me not to let everything else be taken from the temple and the king's palace and the rest of Jerusalem.
    
19. After all, when Nebuchadnezzar took King Jehoiachin to Babylonia as a prisoner, he didn't take everything of value from Jerusalem. He left the bronze pillars, the huge bronze bowl called the Sea, and the movable bronze stands in the temple, and he left a lot of other valuable things in the palace and in the rest of Jerusalem. But now I, the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, say that all these things
    
20. (SEE 27:19)
    
21. (SEE 27:19)
    
22. will be taken to Babylonia, where they will remain until I decide to bring them back to Jerusalem. I, the LORD, have spoken.

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Our sense of justice may tell us that it is not right for God's people, even though disobedient, should be handed over by God to a heathen people while God blesses those heathen people. But we are not God, and God said, "By My great strength and outstretched arm, I made the earth, and the people, and animals on the face of the earth. I give it to anyone I please." (27:5) While we may question God's justice when things don't go well for us, do we also question His justice when they are going well? Of course we don't! We are only concerned about justice when we are caught in its grip.

Judah was already under the rule of king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon because she had turned away from God and were serving other gods. If she were to begin correcting this mistake she would have to begin by serving God through becoming submissive to the situation in which God had placed her - under the rule of Babylon. To fight this would be to fight God and would make Judah's plight even worse. Five other nations were also caught up in the same plight as Judah - vassals of Babylon - and Jeremiah was instructed to deliver God's message to them as well. These five nations were instructed not to listen to their diviners and sorcerers, and Judah was told not to listen to her prophets, for they were all telling lies trying to persuade the nations not to submit to the rule of Babylon. Contrary to the lies of the diviners and prophets, if Judah and the other five nations were to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, they could avoid being banished from their lands altogether and perishing completely. In time, after God was finished with their judgement, He would then deal with Babylon and they would be freed.

What we see as a defense of the things of God can be as misguided as our sense of justice. The false prophets of Judah were prophesying that the objects taken from the temple and carried away to Babylon would soon be returned to the temple. But God refuted this saying that not only would the objects taken away not be returned, those temple objects not yet taken would also be taken away to Babylon. Then He gave a test for the false prophets. If they were true prophets of the Lord, let them "intercede with the LORD of Hosts not to let the articles that remain in the LORD's temple, in the palace of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem go to Babylon." (27:18) Through this intercession, they would either be exonerated as prophets of God, or in failing, would be openly exposed as false prophets.