Jeremiahchapter 21
14 verses · BSBJeremiah book hub →
Speaks with:Jeremiah 32×3Jeremiah 37×3Jeremiah 38×2Isaiah 5×2Jeremiah 33×2Deuteronomy 30×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Zedekiah, with the Babylonians already at the walls, sends Pashhur and Zephaniah the priest to ask whether Jehovah will deal with them according to his wondrous works and make the enemy withdraw. The answer inverts every holy-war memory: God himself will fight against the city 'with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in wrath.' To the people he offers a terrible mercy: 'Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death': he that stays dies by sword, famine, and pestilence; he that goes out to the Chaldeans lives, his life for a prey. To the house of David: execute justice in the morning, lest my fury go forth like fire.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–7 Zedekiah Inquires: I Myself Will Fight Against You
- B. 8–14 The Way of Life and the Way of Death Set Before You
The outline
A.Zedekiah Inquires: I Myself Will Fight Against Youvv. 1 to 7
Read vv. 1 to 7 →B.The Way of Life and the Way of Death Set Before Youvv. 8 to 14
Read vv. 8 to 14 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 21The history
Zedekiah sends two men: Pashhur son of Malchiah — a different man from the temple officer of chapter 20, and one who will appear again among the officials who try to have Jeremiah killed — and Zephaniah the priest. Sending a formal delegation to enquire of a prophet was the recognised way a king asked for an oracle before a battle.
What they are hoping for is a repeat. A little over a century earlier Sennacherib's Assyrian army had surrounded this same city, Hezekiah had sent to Isaiah, and the siege had broken. Everyone in the delegation knew that story.
The answer describes what a besieged city actually died of. Not usually the assault — the sword outside, and inside, plague and starvation as sanitation collapsed and the food ran out. Ancient sieges were won by waiting.
Then comes the most shocking military advice in the Bible: God sets before the people the way of life and the way of death, and the way of life is to go out and surrender to the besiegers. A defector kept his life as his prize of war. Advising desertion during a siege was, by any normal reckoning, treason — and it is what gets him arrested in chapter 37.
What it meant to them
For the first hearers the terrible sentence is the one about who is fighting on which side. God says he himself will fight against this city with an outstretched hand — the same phrase used of the rescue from Egypt, now aimed the other way.
The word to the royal house is not fatalism, though. It is a standing offer: administer justice every morning, deliver the robbed from the oppressor, and the fire need not be kindled. Even at the walls, the terms are still open.
Sources cited
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 21. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.