Jeremiah 28:1-4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And it came to pass the same year Namely, the same in which the preceding prophecy was delivered; for the words manifestly refer to the time specified at the beginning of the foregoing chapter, and confirm the conjecture there made, that Jehoiakim is put there, by a mistake in the copies, for Zedekiah: see note on Jeremiah 26:1, where the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign is termed the beginning of it. Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet That is, a pretended prophet. Being of Gibeon, a city belonging to the priests, it is probable he was a priest as well as Jeremiah; spake unto me in the house of the Lord Delivered publicly, and solemnly, and in the name of the Lord, what he wished to be considered as a true prediction; in the presence of the priests and of the people Who probably were expecting to have some message from Heaven. In delivering this reigned prophecy, Hananiah designed to confront and contradict Jeremiah. His prediction is, that the king of Babylon's power, at least over Judah and Jerusalem, should be speedily broken; that within two full years the vessels of the temple should be brought back, and Jeconiah, and all the captives that were carried away with him, should return; whereas Jeremiah had foretold that the yoke of the king of Babylon should be bound on yet faster, and that the vessels and the captives should not return for seventy years.