Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD.
This year thou shalt die. The prediction was uttered in the fifth month (Jeremiah 28:1); Hananiah's death took place in the seventh month - i:e., within two months after the prediction-answering with awful significance to the two years in which Hananiah had foretold that the yoke imposed by Babylon would end.
Thou hast taught rebellion - opposition to God's plain direction that all should submit to Babylon (Jeremiah 29:32).
Remarks:
(1) Wherever there is genuine coin there generally follows its counterfeit. We are not to argue, as infidels, from the falsity of some prophesyings, that all claims to miraculous prophetic inspiration are false. Each claimant to inspiration must stand on his own warrant. Does his prophecy accord with the existing revelation in the Word of God? And does the event verify the prediction? Hananiah wanted both tests. He promised to sinners peace and safety without repentance: he went directly counter to the recognized prophet of God (Jeremiah), breaking the very yokes which Jeremiah had, by the direction of God, made as the symbol of the nation's coming subjection to Nebuchadnezzar. The existence of the spurious confirms the reality of true revelations-since, if the latter had no real existence, the former would not start up in imitation of them. Let us shun that religious teacher who flatters us in our sins, rather than rouses us by plainly telling us their awful consequences. Let us set our hearts less on temporal ease, such as Hananiah promised, and more on the spiritual peace and heavenly blessings which Hananiah, like many false teachers, kept in the background.
(2) Though Jeremiah, in the discharge of his divine commission, was constrained to prophesy against His nation, he prayed not the less for them. He who is faithful to his God is likely to be so to his country's truest interests. The Christian is ever the true patriot. Self and one's own glory are willingly sacrificed by such a one to the glory of God and the good of one's fellow-men. Even though his ungrateful fellow-citizens may hate and misunderstand him, he will say, like Samuel, "As for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you" (1 Samuel 12:23).
(3) False teachers, who set aside the yoke of the Lord, bring upon their hearers and upon themselves an infinitely more galling yoke (Jeremiah 28:13-14). The yokes of wood which Jeremiah made, and which Hananiah broke, were replaced by yokes of iron. So they who will not preach the alarming as well as the comforting truths of the Gospel, or who substitute formal and ritual service for repentance, faith, and obedience, as the means of giving peace and safety, in the end bring the iron yoke of the law's curse upon themselves and their hearers.
(4) Though generally God does not, in the present dispensation, visit the liar and false teacher with immediate and palpable retribution, yet in some cases even still the guilty are overtaken by the sudden judgment of God. Hananiah in the Old Testament, and his namesake Ananias (Acts 5:1-42) in the New Testament, are awful warnings of the terrible vengeance which, however long delayed in appearance, really "lingereth not" (2 Peter 2:3), and which shall finally overtake "all liars" (Revelation 21:8), and everyone "whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" (Revelation 22:15), "in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."