XXVIII.
(1) And it came to pass the same year... — The chapter stands in immediate sequence with that which precedes and confirms the conclusion that the name Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 27:1 is simply a transcriber’s mistake. Of the Hananiah who appears as the most prominent of the prophet’s adversaries, we know nothing beyond what is here recorded. He was clearly one of the leaders of the party of resistance whom we have seen at work trying to form an alliance with the neighbouring rations in Jeremiah 27, and whose hopes had been revived by the accession of Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) to the throne of Egypt in B.C. 595. The mention of Gibeon suggests two or three thoughts not without interest : — (1) It was, like Anathoth, within the tribe of Benjamin, about six or seven miles from Jerusalem, and so the antagonism between the true prophet and the false in Jerusalem may have been the revival of older local conflicts. (2) Gibeon, like Anathoth, was one of the cities of priests (Joshua 21:17), and Hananiah was probably, therefore, a priest as well as prophet. (3) As still retaining the venerable relics of a worship that had passed away; it had also once been the sanctuary of Jehovah (1 Chronicles 16:39). There the old tabernacle stood which had been with the people in the wilderness — which had been removed from Shiloh when the sacred ark was taken (2 Chronicles 1:3). There Solomon, at the beginning of his reign, offered a stately sacrifice (1 Kings 3:4). Ought not the prophet who had grown up in the midst of those surroundings to have learnt that no place, however sacred, could count on being safe from the changes and chances of time, all fulfilling the righteous purposes of God? The occasion on which he now appears was probably one of the new moon, Sabbath, or other feast-days on which the courts of the Temple were crowded.