Jeremiahchapter 27
22 verses · KJVJeremiah book hub →
Key verse
Thus saith the Lord to me; Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck,
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 11.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Jeremiah makes bonds and bars, wears the yoke on his own neck, and sends duplicates by envoy to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon assembled in Jerusalem. The message is a policy the whole region will hate: the God who made the earth by his great power has given these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar his servant; bring your neck under his yoke and live; listen to the diviners and dreamers who promise otherwise and you will perish. Zedekiah gets the same word, and the priests too: the temple vessels remaining will also go to Babylon, and stay there until the day Jehovah visits them and brings them back.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah · Jeremiah overview
Where the chapter sits
Jeremiah 27 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
Envoys from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon have come to Jerusalem. Five states meeting in one capital under Babylonian rule means one thing: a coordinated revolt is being planned. Babylonian records from these years mention unrest in the west and a disturbance at home, which is exactly the kind of moment small states watch for.
Jeremiah walks into the middle of it wearing a yoke, the wooden crossbar and leather straps put on the neck of a plough ox. It was the standard picture for submission to an overlord, used in treaty language across the region, and he sends duplicate yokes home with the ambassadors for their kings.
His message to five foreign courts is that God, the maker of the earth, has given all these lands to Nebuchadnezzar, and any nation that puts its neck under his yoke will remain on its own soil. Their own diviners, dreamers and fortune tellers are telling them otherwise, and are lying.
The last section deals with the temple vessels taken in 597. Court prophets were promising their quick return. Jeremiah says the rest of the furnishings, pillars, bronze sea and stands still in the house, are going to Babylon too, and will stay there until God brings them back. Ezra's account of the return records those same vessels being handed over decades later.
What it meant to them
First hearers watched a Judean prophet contradict the foreign policy of six governments at once, in front of their ambassadors, wearing farm equipment.
The argument underneath is that submission was not surrender to Babylon's gods; it was obedience to Israel's God, who was handing out empires. Rebellion, sold as faith, would end the nation.
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. Bonds and Yokes Sent to the Neighbouring Kings
1. (v. 1)
a.In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah: The chapter's own heading names Jehoiakim, yet the oracle addresses Zedekiah throughout, sent to him by messengers already in Jerusalem and delivered to him personally at verse 12, a discrepancy the bench has long noted. Some commentators, following the Septuagint (which omits the verse) and the parallel opening at 26:1, take Jehoiakim as a copyist's slip for Zedekiah; others hold the sign was first given under Jehoiakim and repeated or recorded again under Zedekiah's own crisis. The positions are named and held by different writers; the text as it stands names both kings within one short passage.
Jeremiah 27:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
Jeremiah 27:1
“Of Jehoiakim - Really, of Zedekiah, as the Syriac reads (see Jer 27:3). In the Septuagint the verse is missing. Some scribe has confused the title of this chapter with that of Jer. 26.”
Jeremiah 27:1
“Jehoiakim--The prophecy that follows was according to this reading given in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, fifteen years before it was published in the reign of Zedekiah to whom it refers; it was thus long deposited in the prophet's bosom, in order that by it he might be supported under trials in his prophetic career in the interim [CALVIN].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2. (vv. 2-4)
a.Make thee bonds and yokes: Jeremiah is told to make yokes and bonds and wear them on his own neck before sending replicas to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Zidon by the hand of ambassadors already gathered in Jerusalem before Zedekiah. The command joins the book's run of enacted signs, the girdle of chapter 13 and the broken bottle of chapter 19 already behind him, the yoke now carried into an international audience rather than spoken only to Judah. Five kings receive one message through messengers who did not come to hear a sermon, which the bench reads as proof the word was meant to travel further than the room it was spoken in.
Jeremiah 27:2, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:2
“We find him with one on, ch. xxviii. Hereby he intimated that he advised them to nothing but what he was resolved to do himself; for he was not one of those that bind heavy burdens on others, which they themselves will not touch with one of their fingers.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jeremiah 27:3, 2 voices
Jeremiah 27:3
“Come - Or, are come. The ambassadors of these five kings had probably come to Jerusalem to consult about forming a league to throw off the Babylonian supremacy. The attempt failed.”
Jeremiah 27:3
“The task assigned to Jeremiah required great faith, as it was sure to provoke alike his own countrymen and the foreign ambassadors and their kings, by a seeming insult, at the very time that all were full of confident hopes grounded on the confederacy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 5-7)
a.by my great power and by my outstretched arm: The Lord's claim to have made the earth, the man and the beast by his own great power grounds the transfer of empire that follows, for he has given it to Nebuchadnezzar as he pleased, not because Babylon earned it. Nebuchadnezzar is named the Lord's servant here, the same title used again at 25:9 and 43:10, a pagan king pressed into service without being sanctified by the label. The grant is timed rather than permanent, until the very time of his land come, when many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him in turn, Babylon's own fall already written into the terms of its rise.
Jeremiah 27:5, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:5
“If it be asked, why God designed what he purposed to be made known to be concealed for so long a time? the answer is this, -- that it was done for the sake of the Prophet himself, in order that he might with more alacrity perform his office, knowing of a certainty that no one thought that it could ever happen, and certainly the thing was incredible.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Jeremiah 27:6, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:6
“As the beasts are to submit to Christ, the Restorer of the dominion over nature, lost by the first Adam (compare Ge 1:28; Ps 8:6-8), so they were appointed to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, the representative of the world power and prefigurer of Antichrist; this universal power was suffered to be held by him to show the unfitness of any to wield it "until He come whose right it is" (Eze 21:27).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Jeremiah 27:7, 2 voices
Jeremiah 27:7
“His son, and his son’s son - Evil-Merodach and Nabonadius (see Dan 5:1 note). Shall serve themselves of him - See the marginal reference. After long servitude to the Persian and Median kings, the Selucidae ruined the remains of Babylon.”
Jeremiah 27:7
“All nations - That is, all these nations. His son - And Evil- Merodach his son, and Belshazzar his grand-child. Until - Until the period of his kingdom shall come, which was after seventy years, according to chap. xxix, 10.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (vv. 8-11)
a.until I have consumed them by his hand: The nation that refuses Babylon's yoke is promised sword, famine and pestilence until consumed, while the nation that submits is promised the opposite, to remain in its own land and till it and dwell there. Submission is framed as the path of survival rather than shame, a mercy folded inside a hard command, as the commentators note against any reading of the chapter as bare threat. The prophets who counsel resistance are named liars whose word, if followed, drives the very people out of the land they claim to be defending.
Jeremiah 27:9, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:9-10
“Particular prophecies against these nations that bordered on Israel severally, the ruin of which is here foretold in the general, we shall meet with, ch. xlviii. and xlix., and Ezek. xxv. , which had the same accomplishment with this here.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
B. Serve the King of Babylon and Live
1. (vv. 12-13)
a.Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon: The same charge is carried to Zedekiah in person, bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live, the king given the identical offer already made to the nations around him. Why will ye die is put to him directly, submission framed as the king's own choice rather than an imposed fate, which makes his eventual refusal, recorded in 2 Kings 25, a decision against a plain warning rather than an ambush. The bench reads the personal address as the chapter's real center, five foreign kings receiving one message so that Judah's own king could not say he heard it last.
Jeremiah 27:12, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:12
“And is it not much more our wisdom to submit to the sweet and easy yoke of our rightful Lord and Master Jesus Christ, that we may secure the lives of our souls? Bring down your spirits to repentance and faith, and that is the way to bring up your spirits to heaven and glory.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jeremiah 27:13, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:13
“Zedekiah was restless under the Babylonian yoke, and the false prophets found only too ready a hearing from him. He is addressed in the plural because his feelings were fully shared by the mass of the officers of state and by the people.”
2. (vv. 14-15)
a.for they prophesy a lie unto you: Jeremiah repeats the warning against the prophets, this time naming their source directly, I have not sent them, saith the Lord, yet they prophesy a lie in my name. The distinction is not between confident and timid prophets but between sent and unsent ones, a test the confrontation with Hananiah in the next chapter will make into a public spectacle. False prophecy here is treated as theft of the Lord's name for a message he never gave, not merely a wrong guess about the future.
3. (vv. 16-18)
a.shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon: The priests and people are told the vessels of the Lord's house will not shortly be brought again from Babylon, contradicting whatever comfort was circulating among them, and Jeremiah offers a test rather than an argument: if these are true prophets, let them intercede that the vessels still left in Jerusalem not also go to Babylon. The proposed proof reverses the false prophets' own claim, asking them to pray to keep what remains rather than promise the return of what is already gone, a request the text never records them attempting.
Jeremiah 27:16, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:16
“The vessels of the Lord’s house - Which had been carried away by Nebuchadnezzar under the reigns of Jehoiakim and Jeconiah, 2Ch 36:7-10. Shall now shortly be brought again - This is a lie. They shall not be restored till I bring them up, Jer 27:22, which was after the captivity, when they were sent back by Cyrus, the Lord inclining his heart to do it, Ezr 1:7, and Ezr 7:19.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 27:17, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:17
“Hearken not unto them,.... The false prophets: serve the king of Babylon, and live; pay homage and tribute to him; which is the way to live in your own land, and enjoy the benefits of that, and of the temple worship; which, if not, you will be utterly deprived of: wherefore should this city be laid waste? as it certainly will, should you rebel against the king of Babylon; and as it was in a few years after, when they did.”
Jeremiah 27:18, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:18
“Note, Prophets must be praying men; by being much in prayer they must make it to appear that they keep up a correspondence with heaven. We cannot think that those do, as prophets, ever hear thence, who do not frequently by prayer send thither.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 19-22)
a.concerning the pillars, and concerning the sea, and concerning the bases: The chapter closes with an inventory of what Nebuchadnezzar left behind in his first deportation under Jeconiah, the pillars, the sea and the bases, named against what he already carried away, the vessels and the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem. These too, the Lord says, shall be carried to Babylon, and there they will remain until the day that I visit them, the same verb of visitation the seventy years of chapter 29 will attach a date to. The vessels' history is told as the city's own in miniature, taken in stages, held in exile, and promised restoration to this place, not to a substitute.
Jeremiah 27:19, 2 voices
Jeremiah 27:19
“For thus saith the Lord of hosts concerning the pillars,.... The pillars of brass that stood in the temple; the one called Boaz, and the other Jachin, 1Ki 7:15; and concerning the sea; the sea of molten brass, which stood upon twelve oxen, 1Ki 7:23; and concerning the bases: the ten bases, which also were made of brass, 1Ki 7:27; and concerning the residue of the vessels that remain in this city; in the king's palace, and in the houses of the noblemen, and of the rich and wealthy inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
Jeremiah 27:19
“Concerning the pillars - Two brazen columns placed by Solomon in the pronaos or portico of the temple, eighteen cubits high, and twelve in circumference, 1Ki 7:16-22; Jer 52:11. The sea - The brazen sea, ten cubits in diameter, and thirty in circumference. It contained water for different washings in the Divine worship, and was supported on twelve brazen oxen. Perhaps these are what are called the bases here. See the parallel places at 2Ki 25:13 (note), etc.; Jer 52:17 (note), Jer 52:20-21 (note), and the notes on them.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jeremiah 27:20, 2 voices
Jeremiah 27:20
“Which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took not,.... For he seems only to have taken the vessels of gold, and left the vessels of brass, as the above were; see 2Ki 24:13; when he carried away captive Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem; of which see 2Ki 24:12.”
Jeremiah 27:20
“This was grievous to them above any thing; for the temple was their pride and confidence, and the stripping of that was too plain an indication of that which the true prophet told them, that their God had departed from them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jeremiah 27:22, 1 voice
Jeremiah 27:22
“They shall be carried to Babylon - Far from those already taken being brought back, those which now remain shall be carried thither, unless ye submit to the Chaldeans. They did not submit, and the prophecy was literally fulfilled; see Jer 52:17-23; 2Ki 25:13, 2Ch 36:18.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 27. 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 Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Prophecies of Jeremiah; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown; John Calvin; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) and Matthew Henry.