Jeremiahchapter 24
10 verses · KJVJeremiah book hub →
Key verse
And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 4 to 10.
The chapter
Chapter summary
After Jeconiah and the craftsmen were carried to Babylon, Jeremiah sees two baskets of figs set before the temple. One very good, like first-ripe figs, the other so bad they cannot be eaten. The reading upends the popular arithmetic that survival equals blessing. The good figs are the exiles God has sent to Chaldea for their good: 'I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land… and I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Jehovah.' The bad figs are Zedekiah, his princes, the survivors in Jerusalem and those settled in Egypt. To be tossed among all the kingdoms of the earth for a reproach and a byword.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah · Jeremiah overview
Where the chapter sits
Jeremiah 24 falls in Against kings, prophets, and priests (chapters 21–29). Oracles against Judah's last kings; the Branch (23:5–6); false prophets; Hananiah's yoke; the letter to the exiles.
Before it: Temple sermon and symbolic acts, chapters 7–20. After it: Book of consolation, chapters 30–33.
The whole shape of Jeremiah→The world behind itThe date, the place, the people, and the works this site draws the setting from.
The history
The vision is set at a familiar sight. Baskets of first-ripe produce were carried up and set before the sanctuary as an offering, so two baskets of figs standing in front of the temple would have looked entirely ordinary. One holds very good figs, like the first-ripe crop of early summer that everybody prized. The other holds figs so rotten they cannot be eaten.
The event behind the vision is the deportation of 597 BC. Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, removed King Jehoiachin, his mother, his officials, and, the text stresses, the craftsmen and the metalworkers. Empires deported skilled labour on purpose. A province with no smiths cannot make weapons, and a province with no engineers cannot rebuild a wall.
Zedekiah was left ruling what remained, which included most of the population, the surviving nobility, and the temple still standing with its furnishings. From inside Jerusalem it looked obvious who God had preserved.
The vision reverses it. The good figs are the exiles. The bad figs are Zedekiah, his officials, the remnant in Jerusalem, and those who had fled to Egypt.
What it meant to them
This was a direct attack on the comfort of the survivors. The people still holding the city and the temple were told they were the spoiled basket.
For the exiles, the same vision was the first hint of an extraordinary promise: God says he will set his eyes on them for good in the land of the Chaldeans, and give them a heart to know him. The blessing had moved to Babylon, and nobody in Jerusalem had noticed.
Sources cited
- The Babylonian Chronicle, in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
A. Two Baskets of Figs Set Before the Temple
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the Lord: The vision is dated by a specific deportation, after Nebuchadrezzar had carried away Jeconiah and the craftsmen with him, and the two baskets are set where the whole nation would see the point being made, before the temple itself. The good figs and the naughty figs are both real figs, first-ripe and inedible, a distinction the eye can see without argument, and Jeremiah is asked to name only what is in front of him before the Lord supplies the meaning. The commentators note the timing, roughly the same period as the temple sermon and the potter's house, the book working through several enacted signs after plain preaching alone had failed to land.
Jeremiah 24:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
Jeremiah 24:1
“Omit “were.” “Set before,” i. e put in the appointed place for offerings of firstfruits in the forecourt of the temple. Carpenters - “Craftsmen” (see the marginal reference).”
Jeremiah 24:2, 2 voices
Jeremiah 24:2
“Hence miserable Jeconiah, who was banished and deprived of his kingdom, was apparently undergoing a most grievous punishment, together with his companions, who had been led away with him; and the Jews who remained at Jerusalem no doubt flattered themselves, as though God had dealt more kindly with them.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Jeremiah 24:2
“They are called good and bad respectively, not in an absolute, but a comparative sense, and in reference to the punishment of the latter. This prophecy was designed to encourage the despairing exiles, and to reprove the people at home, who prided themselves as superior to those in Babylon and abused the forbearance of God (compare Jer 52:31-34).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
B. The Good Figs Carried Away, the Bad Left Behind
1. (vv. 4-7)
a.Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: The good figs are identified as the captives already in Babylon, and the reversal is total: exile itself, the thing every earlier oracle names as judgment, is here called for their good, sent out for their own benefit rather than in spite of it. The promise recovers the exact verbs of the prophet's own call, I will build them, and not pull them down, and I will plant them, and not pluck them up, the watching over to build answering the watching to pluck up named at 1:10. Verse 7 completes the covenant formula, an heart to know me, they shall be my people, and I will be their God, and the commentators read the unit as the book's clearest statement that the exile itself, not merely the return from it, was the path chosen for the nation's healing.
Jeremiah 24:5, 2 voices
Jeremiah 24:5
“Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge - Those already carried away into captivity, I esteem as far more excellent than those who still remain in the land. They have not sinned so deeply, and they are now penitent; and, therefore, I will set mine eyes upon them for good, Jer 24:6. I will watch over them by an especial providence, and they shall be restored to their own land.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 24:5
“By their afflictions they were convinced of sin, humbled under the hand of God, weaned from the world, made serious, taught to pray, and turned from their iniquity; particularly they were cured of their inclination to idolatry; and thus it was good for them that they were afflicted, Ps. cxix. (4.) God promises them that he will own them in their captivity.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jeremiah 24:6, 2 voices
Jeremiah 24:6
“Christ is a builder and architect, about whom it has been said in the prophets: "He will build my city, and he will turn back the captivity of my people." Thus the Lord said, "And I will build them up, and I will not tear them down." For the God who is good takes down certain buildings. For it is necessary that the building of unclean spirits be destroyed in us, and a temple to God be built in this way from virtues and right teachings so that his glory can be seen in it.”
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· FRAGMENTS ON JEREMIAH 23patristic
Jeremiah 24:6
“Their captivity was to square the rough stones and make them fit for his building, to prune up the young trees and make them fit for his planting. (6.) He engages to prepare them for these temporal mercies which he designed for them by bestowing spiritual mercies upon them,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jeremiah 24:7, 3 voices
Jeremiah 24:7
“WITH what blindness has sin struck the heart of man, for man does not know his own Maker! It is implied in the text that in his heart he is ignorant of Jehovah, though in Him he lives, and moves, and has his being. What an impotence has sin brought upon the mind of man, since being ignorant of God he is also incapable of finding Him out! This, also, may be most readily gathered from the text.”
Charles Spurgeon· The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1206: “Heart-Knowledge of God” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1874)Particular (Reformed) Baptist / Five-point Calvinist / 1689 LBCF / 19th-c. evangelical
Jeremiah 24:7
“The source of their conversion is here stated to be God's prevenient grace. for they shall return--Repentance, though not the cause of pardon, is its invariable accompaniment: it is the effect of God's giving a heart to know Him.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Jeremiah 24:7
“Note, Those that have backslidden from God, if they do in sincerity return to him, are admitted as freely as any to all the privileges and comforts of the everlasting covenant, which is herein well-ordered, that every transgression in the covenant does not throw us out of covenant, and that afflictions are not only consistent with, but flowing from, covenant-love.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 8-10)
a.as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten: The bad figs are named specifically, Zedekiah, his princes, and those left in Jerusalem, joined by the community that had fled to Egypt rather than submit to Babylon, the very people who by every natural measure looked like the ones who had escaped judgment. Verse 9 piles four words on their coming reputation, a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in every place the Lord will drive them, language that answers the taunt Moab and the nations later receive in their own oracles. The unit reverses the assumption a first reader might bring to the vision, that staying in the land or fleeing it was the safer course, and states instead that obedience to the word already given through Jeremiah, not geography, decided which basket a person belonged to.
Jeremiah 24:8, 1 voice
Jeremiah 24:8
“So will I give Zedekiah - I will treat these as they deserve. They shall be carried into captivity, and scattered through all nations. Multitudes of those never returned to Judea; the others returned at the end of seventy years.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 24:9, 1 voice
Jeremiah 24:9
“And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt,.... Jeconiah and the captives with him were only carried into Babylon; but these should be scattered one from another into the several parts of the world.”
Jeremiah 24:10, 2 voices
Jeremiah 24:10
“And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them,.... Meaning not in other lands, where they should be driven, but while in their own land, by which many should perish; and the rest that escaped these dreadful judgments should be carried captive.”
Jeremiah 24:10
“I will send the sword - Many of them fell by sword and famine in the war with the Chaldeans, and many more by such means afterwards. The first received their captivity as a correction, and turned to God; the latter still hardened their hearts more and more, and probably very many of them never returned: perhaps they are now amalgamated with heathen nations. Lord, how long?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 24. 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 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Prophecies of Jeremiah; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1206: “Heart-Knowledge of God” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1874); Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Calvin; John Gill; Matthew Henry and Origen of Alexandria, FRAGMENTS ON JEREMIAH 23.
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