Jeremiah 29:7 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

And seek the peace of the city... — This was, we may believe, the hardest command of all. To refrain from all curses and imprecations, even from such as came from the lips of those who hung their harps on the willows by the waters of Babylon (Psalms 137), to pray for the peace and prosperity of the city where they were eating the bread of captivity — this surely required an almost superhuman patience. Yet this was the prophet’s counsel. It seems almost to follow — unless we apply Augustine’s rule, Distingue tempora, and refer the psalm to a time prior to Jeremiah’s letter, or nearer the day of vengeance — that those imprecations, natural as they seem, belonged to a lower stage of spiritual progress than that represented by the prophet. He was, to those impatient exiles, as our Lord was to the impatient disciples who sought to call down fire on the village of the Samaritans (Luke 9:54-56). So, we may remember, Christians living under Nero were told to pray for the Emperor (1 Timothy 2:2).