They Are Therefore Not To Listen To The False Prophets As, Rather Than Experiencing Quick Restoration, Zedekiah And Jerusalem Are Doomed Because They Have Not Listened To YHWH's Words (Jeremiah 29:15-19).
“Because you have said, ‘YHWH has raised us up prophets in Babylon,”
Men must always have some hope to cling on to, and there are always those who will seek to profit by it. So in this case prophets had arisen among the exiles in Babylon, and this had enthused the people. It had made them feel that YHWH had perhaps not after all deserted them. Some were good prophets like Ezekiel, and it was they who rebuilt the broken nation. But others were chancers who were more politically minded and seized the opportunity to proclaim ‘instant deliverance', a message which would have been eagerly seized on. They promised a quick return of the exiles to their brothers and sisters in Judah. This no doubt partly arose because there was an awareness of rumblings in Babylon which would always arise among peoples constrained there against their will. What they overlooked was that such rumblings rarely actually came to anything.
“Thus says YHWH concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your brothers who have not gone forth with you into captivity,”
But they did seem to have significance to those who believed that their own king ‘sat on the throne of David', the David who had ruled such a great empire The words used here would suggest that the false prophets were laying a great emphasis on ‘the king who sat on David's throne'. It must be remembered that even after their experiences with Babylonian troops their knowledge of the power and size of the Babylonian empire was limited. There were no countrywide, or even local, newspapers, no roving reporters, no radio, no television. They only knew what they themselves had seen, and what was learned from passing travellers. And one set of troops seemed very like another. Thus their hopes lay in the king appointed by YHWH, ‘His firstborn, ruler of the kings of the earth' (Psalms 89:27) who would one day ‘chastise the nations with a rod of iron' (Psalms 2:9). They had sung about it in the Temple. Now was the time to believe in it.
But Jeremiah dampens their enthusiasm. This king in whom they were pinning such hopes, and this city to which they looked with such longing, and their brothers who had been left behind, were themselves facing judgments, judgments from YHWH which would remove all hope from them.
“Thus says YHWH of hosts, Behold, I will send on them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad.”
For YHWH of hosts was about to send on them sword, and famine and pestilence to such an extent that it would make Jerusalem and Judah not a good place to be. They were to become like rotten, loathsome, inedible figs (compare Jeremiah 24:3; Jeremiah 24:8, although the word for vile here is different and signifies utterly loathsome), which turn men off and have nothing to offer them. Thus any idea of the current throne of David being a succour to them should be immediately dismissed..
“And I will pursue after them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth, to be an execration, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations where I have driven them,”
And not only would they experience the sword, and famine, and pestilence, but these things would continue to pursue them wherever they went, and they would be tossed to and from among all the kingdoms of the earth (compare Jeremiah 15:4; Jeremiah 24:9), to become an execration, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations to which YHWH would send them (compare Jeremiah 24:9). The idea would appear to be that they would not participate in the coming restoration at the end of the seventy years because they were so perverted but would become a permanent spectacle to the nations who would simply despise them.
“Because they have not listened to my words, the word of YHWH, with which I sent to them my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, but you would not hear, the word of YHWH,”
And this would happen to them because of their continual refusal to listen to His words as spoken by Jeremiah (this was the assured prophetic word of YHWH), and by previous prophets, words which He had, in terms of the usual Jeremaic expression (rising up early, etc. - Jeremiah 7:13; Jeremiah 25: Jeremiah 26:5; Jeremiah 32:33; Jeremiah 35:15), been at great pains to deliver to them.
But at this stage He now also includes those to whom Jeremiah is writing, for He deliberately changes from ‘them' to ‘you'. The exiles must not be allowed to think that somehow they are not equally to blame for what has happened.