Truth and Consequences:
A study in the prophecy of Jeremiah
Chapter 44a
Lesson Forty-three: Egyptian idolatry
INTRODUCTION
How often did you actually hear the cry of the upset teacher or parent in your life, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you 100 times, …”? Was it to clean up after yourself or to put the homework in your backpack or to turn in the assignment into the yellow folder on her desk or… Sometimes we simply forgot, to be fair, due to increased other responsibilities or other concerns rising to the top of our limited thinking. But the teacher or parent is evidencing what Jeremiah, our weeping prophet, must have been thinking in this final warning and prophecy to the Jewish people after 40 years of proclamation. And we have recorded in his and Baruch’s writings, dozens of such warnings, so maybe he had told them 100 times.
What does someone think who in exasperation declares this “If I’ve told you once…”? I imagine, something like “I really want you to do well. I really want you to heed my warnings. I really want the best for you.” To me, this is not a matter of anger, so much as a matter of desire, a longing for betterness and a hope for a future. When you consider not brushing your teeth tonight, maybe this hope will be realized. When you keep your homework assignment in your locker instead of turning it into the proper location on the teacher’s desk, maybe you will suddenly realize what you didn’t make happen and you will quickly make your way to the locker, open it, find the assignment, and submit it to the authority.
This is the feeling I’m getting when reading chapter 44 of Jeremiah.
Let’s dig in and see what this final pronouncement has to say to us as 21st Century people.
Verse 1: this ‘word’ is for “all the Jews” now living in Egypt. Of course, not all the Jews were there. Some remained near Jerusalem and were tending flocks and lands. They were under the scrutiny of people like Nebuzaradan, and perhaps their activity was providing for the occupiers of the land of Judah. Other Jews were already in Babylon, the dreaded enemies of the Jewish people in 586 BCE, who had either been taken captive at the fall of the city and the destruction of the Temple in that year, or the Jewish people who had taken Jeremiah’s advice and surrendered to the Babylonian invaders years before and were making the best of it, living in captivity in Babylon.
Jeremiah’s word in chapter 44 is not written to those on home soil nor to those held captive in Babylon, but rather to the Egyptian visitors. The warnings of chapters 42 and 43 went unheeded, and the remnant that sought their own way, who sought to save themselves from sure destruction, escaped Judah and travelled south into the land of Egypt. Not a good place for Jews then, and with the memory of the Exodus 900 years earlier, not a good place back then as well.
Jeremiah lists the cities where he preached, so I’m guessing he travelled a fair bit. Remember, he was under house arrest, by his own people, taken captive to travel to Egypt. Did he actually get to Memphis and the land of Pathros? We’re not sure, but if not, they would have likely had representatives where Jeremiah was speaking, so he could give them godly advice about their future.
The northeastern Egyptian villages of Tahpanhes and MIgdol, then travelling south to Memphis, the historic capital of Egypt since about 3000 BCE, and then down to the southern sprawl of the land of Pathros. Remember, Upper Egypt is south and Lower Egypt is north and contains the delta of the Nile and famous cities like Alexandria and Rosetta.
Verse 2, Jeremiah invokes the Lord using two different appellations. First he is the Lord of Hosts. That’s a military term. Hosts (Ts’vaot) means armies. Speaking of God in this way, reminding the people who are in trauma, in fear, having abandoned their homeland, and who think that God doesn’t see or care, this is Jeremiah’s chutzpah. It’s as if he’s saying, “You thought God’s arm was too short that it couldn’t save you, and thus you sought to save yourself. But God is the general over all the armies of heaven, and you didn’t trust him.”
Remember, earlier warnings were dismissed by Yochanan and all the commanders of the forces that were with him (42.7ff). God and Jeremiah are saying, “I’ve told you 100 times…”
The 2nd appellation in verse 2 is “The God of Israel.” For those who are new to our study today, Judah, that is the southern 2 tribes of the divided land, has been Jeremiah’s focus for 4 decades. Why? Because Israel, that is, the northern 10 tribes, was taken into captivity 150 years earlier in 722 BCE, taken by Assyrian forces and then slowly those tribes have trickled back into what we call Samaria and other northern parts of today’s Israel with intermarriage and syncretistic religion. There really was no Israel at that time, at least not until some further repair happens in the Land after the Babylonian exile terminates about 70 years hence.
Thus when Jeremiah tells the Judah remnant that the Lord is the God of Israel, he’s highlighting God’s own faithfulness, and I’m reminded of one of Paul’s lines to his mate and fellow apostle Timothy, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” (2 Tim. 2.13)
We have often lacked the very thing that would keep us in God’s presence, in His care, in His love and that is simply ‘faith.’ So you would think that after a certain amount of time and a certain number of warnings that the Almighty would say, “Enough. I’ve had enough of you people. I’m going to reboot my hard drive. I’m going to wipe the disk of you people and I’m going to start over with others. Maybe the next team will be faithful.” Maybe you have thought that God would be done with you; I certainly have thought that at times.
But when you think in those terms, you are making you the senior partner of the relationship. You are deciding that your destiny and your relationship with God is based on your performance and your beliefs and your actions and you. That’s exactly NOT what God is saying by using Jeremiah to speak to the escapees in Egypt. He’s saying, “I’m faithful. And I’m the God is Israel, even.” Or as the apostle wrote to the Thessalonians, “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.” (1 Thes. 5.24)
Our relationship with God is based on God, and God’s call, not on our performance. Dear friends, if that doesn’t give you goose bumps or at least a sense of relief, then I’m not a very good communicator.
Verse 2 continues with the indictment.
You have seen. All of you. Or in the American south, all y’all have seen. No one can say they didn’t know. You have been eyewitnesses of the ‘calamity’ (Hebrew: ra’ah, that is wickedness or bad stuff) that I HAVE BROUGHT on the cities of Judah and on Jeruslalem. Whoa! Wait a minute. Who is responsible for the fall of Jerusalem? God takes the credit! That cannot be. He told us to build and to dwell and to make the land of milk and honey ours, and, oh, um, to make it his, too. Now he says he pushed us out and caused the desolation which to this day continues to stand in both Older and Newer Testaments as a line in the sand, as a warning, as an historical marker of the Worst Day Ever for the Jewish people.
Exile, which began for the people of God back in the Garden of Eden, will continue to be the warning and the destiny of all who know God but refuse to live as His people UNTIL Yeshua’s 2nd coming to make all things right on this earth.
Note, in God’s commentary that he says “Behold!” meaning “Don’t miss this.” God is getting serious with us at this point. He even exaggerates a bit with the “no one lives there” even though we know some still remain both of the Jewish people and the invaders from Babylon.
Verse 3 tells us the cause of this calamity. God owns the action of exile, but what is the cause? It’s clear as crystal. Burning incense to foreign gods, foreign in their activity and foreign because no one of us, neither you, they, nor your fathers. There is no historical connection with the Egyptian gods or the foreign gods to whom your people were making offerings in the shadow of the Holy Temple. How ridiculous! With true religion right in front of them, they still chose to commit idolatry. Glaring hypocrisy. Glaring and “in your face” resistance to the plans and the worship of the Living God. God calls it “wickedness” (It’s the same Hebrew word “ra’ah”). I hear the echoes of Romans chapter 1, don’t you? There the apostle Paul said this, with the same heartbreak as Jeremiah,
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth 1in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not 1honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and 1crawling creatures. (Romans 1.18-23)
What a waste! Keep reading later today in Romans 1 and see the result of their idolatry, and that God had to turn them over to more and more sin and lawlessness. Why? Because they exchanged the glory of God for an image. That’s idolatry. That’s the exact opposite of the First Commandment. And the 2nd and the 3rd. God is #1 and he will not be allowing his people to substitute false or fake gods in his place. That’s what love does. It intervenes. Judgment is God’s penultimate activity to bring us to love.
Verse 4. God says through Jeremiah that he sent warning after warning after warning through the prophets.
You know the story that is being told often in our days during the heights of floods the last couple of years, say near Lismore. A man is approached by the SES as the rains are coming, but he refuses the help of the SES. He says, “God will save me.” After several rescue attempts in the face of approaching floodwaters, each time the man keeps telling the would-be rescuers that God will save him. After turning down the last, he drowns in the flood. After his death, the man meets God and asks why God did not intervene. God responds that he sent all the would-be rescuers to the man's aid on the expectation he would accept that help.
Imagine the frustration of God who sent the prophets, who had the people living in the shadow of the worship centre called The Temple, and yet, they still chose fake gods.
The same burning of incense to fake gods caused the burning anger of God (verse 6) to destroy Jerusalem. Now don’t get me wrong. The people who actually levelled Jerusalem will get theirs in subsequent chapters.
Verse 7, a new declaration from heaven. Now your sins are yours, there in Egypt, so we don’t really know how long they have been in the territories of the south, but a significant time. Verses 2-6 related to the Judah people’s time in Judah; now the proclamation is against their activities in the land of Egypt. Verse 9, have you forgotten?
Forgot what? The sins of five teams, your parents, the kings of Judah, the wives of the kings, your own, your own wives. This is comprehensive evil. No one is doing right; nobody has withdrawn from the evil and as a result, God will bring evil on us in Egypt. How could we have repaired this?
Verse 10: be contrite (duk’oo ), fear God, walk in his ways. We did none of those three. And that’s the order of things, too. You can’t walk in his ways without fearing him, and you cannot fear him without being in a humble mode.
Verse 11-14, the pronouncement of judgment. The verdict is in. And the sentencing is made by the judge. Guilty and guilty. The noun in verse 11 “for woe” is the Hebrew for “evil, again ra’ah” It’s the cut off. None of you escapees from Judah now living in Egypt are going to survive. You will fall by the verse 13 “sword, pestilence and famine.” Natural and unnatural problems will cause us all to die. None will survive, except (verse 14) maybe a few.
Think about a man named Apollos whom we meet in Acts chapter 18. He was a Jew born in Alexandria several hundred years later than Jeremiah’s prediction. Either some Jews moved to Egypt again under the Ptolemys or running away from Rome or his family might have been one of those who would survive the comprehensive death order from heaven in Jeremiah 44.
Verse 15 begins the final decree by the people of Judah now living in Egypt. Your honor, may the defendant be able to speak one last time? Yes, the judge says. And this is when you want the Jewish people to line up with Jeremiah’s considered prophecy and to admit, to be contrite, to say some Yom Kippur prayers and admit error, and sin, and ra’ah. But what do we hear?
We hear boasting and confession of how the religion worked back in the day. We had plenty of food and drink. We not only survived; we succeeded. Listen to their admission.
“As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you! But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of 3food and were well off and saw no misfortune.” (.16-17)
Not only are they are slightly resistant. They are completely defiant and brazen. Think of the adulteress that Agur mentions in Proverbs chapter 30… “This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wrong.”” (.20)
I’ve done nothing wrong. That’s when your conscience is seared. That’s when all hope for repair is gone.
Verse 17 is full of misinformation and misapplication of history. When were the Jewish people ‘well off?’ And what was the cause? These escapees are attributing their success to idolatry and the queen of heaven, likely Isis of Egypt or even the Ishtar cults of Mesopotamia. Some today cite Lotto or SportsBet; others their ‘lucky stars’ or such. But God is jealous and wants us to get this right. Our good fortune is not based on luck or happenings, but rather to His sovereignty.
Verse 18 highlights the blame, the accusation by the Egyptian Jews, on Jeremiah. He’s the cause of our troubles. Or maybe Josiah’s renewals some decades earlier, “we stopped burning…” was taking place in those days.
Even the women join in the chorus in verse 19 and say they had it better back then. We had it made.
But Jeremiah holds firm to the end. We will pick this up next week as we cover 44b and 45 together. Where he tells them once, even the 1000th time, “IF I told you once, I’ve told you 100 times, repent, be contrite, fear God, walk in his ways and listen to him.”
Gerald Keown says, “It is interesting to note that Jer 29:18–19 presents almost exactly the same picture of Yahweh’s judgment, but in a context that nevertheless holds out hope for the future. The same can be said for Jer 32:29–35, with the added dimension in Jer 32:29 of virtually the same sins against Yahweh as those committed by the Jews who fled to Egypt. Jer 32 concludes with a glowing word of hope and promise on the other side of terrible judgment. In striking contrast, no hope at all is offered to the recipients of the judgment oracle of Jer 44. The Egyptian community seems to carry with it a special level of guilt that annuls any such hope.”
To what or to whom do you attribute thanks when things go your way? To what or to whom do you cling when things are not going your way? Who is Lord of your life? Whether you live as an alien in Egypt in 565 BCE or as a foreigner in Sydney in 2022, the message remains the same, who is God in your life? And will you be 1) contrite, 2) fearing God and 3) walk in his ways? Yeshua is God’s answer for all our considerations about God.
Want to know who God is? Look at Yeshua. Want to know what God thinks of sin, listen to how Yeshua dealt with sin in the lives of those near by. What does God think of the alleged queen of heaven? See what Yeshua says about all the others who came before him.
Friends in a moment, Jimmy is going to offer you a prayer to pray to get right with God. Don’t let this moment slip past you. Receive Yeshua today and stay contrite. That’s real hope. That’s real life. No matter the size of your fridge or the amount of goods in your pantry.
CONCLUSION
God is calling each of us to know him and to walk with him, today and throughout our days. Have you received Yeshua as your messiah and Lord? He is risen from the dead! Have you renounced your sin, your idolatry, your forsaking God and given him First Place in your life? If not, please, do so now, just now, as we pray together. Use your own words, if you want, but yield, surrender, to the Lord of life.
PRAYER
Then please write us (admin@jewsforjesus.org.au) to tell us what you have just done, and we will send you literature and encourage you. You are part of our family; we love and appreciate you. And we want you to enjoy the presence of the Lord who calls, who knows, who blesses and builds us up.
We hope to see you again next week as we study chapter 45. Until then, Shabbat shalom!
>> Nebu (Nabu) is one of the more important minor deities of the Babylonian–Assyrian pantheon. The god Nebo (Akkadian Nabû, "the called") appears in the Code of Hammurabi in the early 2nd millennium b.c. as son of the national god Marduk and tutelary deity of the city Borsippa (to the south of the city of Babylon) and of its temple Ezida. In later documents he is characterized as the divine scribe, writer, and bearer of the "tablets of destiny" that enshrine the decrees of the gods. In accordance with this role, he was considered patron of the scribal art and of human learning.
>>
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, Albert, Commentary on the Old Testament. (Published by many, from 1880 on)
Henry, Matthew, Commentary.
Keown, Gerald, Scalise, Pamela, Smothers, Thomas, Word Biblical Commentary. Book of Jeremiah (Part 2). 1995.
McConnville, Gordon, Jeremiah, New Bible Commentary.
Wright, Christopher, The Message of Jeremiah, The Bible Speaks Today. Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2014.
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ACTUAL TEXT
Conquest of Egypt Predicted
Jer. 44:1 The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Jews living in the land of Egypt, those who were living in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and the land of Pathros, saying, 2 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘You yourselves have seen all the calamity that I have brought on Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah; and behold, this day they are in ruins and no one lives in them, 3 because of their wickedness which they committed so as to provoke Me to anger by continuing to burn sacrifices and to serve other gods whom they had not known, neither they, you, nor your fathers. 4 ‘Yet I sent you all My servants the prophets, again and again, saying, “Oh, do not do this abominable thing which I hate.” 5 ‘But they did not listen or incline their ears to turn from their wickedness, so as not to burn sacrifices to other gods. 6 ‘Therefore My wrath and My anger were poured out and burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, so they have become a ruin and a desolation as it is this day. 7 ‘Now then thus says the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel, “Why are you doing great harm to yourselves, so as to cut off from you man and woman, child and infant, from among Judah, leaving yourselves without remnant, 8 provoking Me to anger with the works of your hands, burning sacrifices to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you are entering to reside, so that you might be cut off and become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth? 9 “Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 10 “But they have not become contrite even to this day, nor have they feared nor walked in My law or My statutes, which I have set before you and before your fathers.”’
Jer. 44:11 “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am going to set My face against you for woe, even to cut off all Judah. 12 ‘And I will take away the remnant of Judah who have set their mind on entering the land of Egypt to reside there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt; they will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine. Both small and great will die by the sword and famine; and they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation and a reproach. 13 ‘And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine and with pestilence. 14 ‘So there will be no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there and then to return to the land of Judah, to which they are longing to return and live; for none will return except a few refugees.’”
Jer. 44:15 Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by, as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah, saying, 16 “As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you! 17 “But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, 1by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. 18 “But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.” 19 “And,” said the women, “when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?”
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