Study 29 From the Book of Jeremiah is: Jeremiah 44 and 45
This is the last recorded scene of Jeremiah’s life. The now aged
prophet, exiled in Egypt, visits some place where his fellow-countrymen are
gathered and delivers a last message from their God, a message which they
resolutely reject, thus drawing upon themselves their own destruction. Chapter
45 is a much earlier fragment, belonging, to the fourth year of Jehoiakim (see
Note on 36:8)
1.
How would you sum up Jeremiah’s message in 44:2-14? What was the
spiritual condition of the people as revealed in their reply (cf. 17:9; Is.
44:20)? And what was God’s final word to them, through His servant? Cf. 1 Jn. 5:21.
2.
44: 17, 18, 21-23. Here are two divergent interpretations of
Judah’s recent past. Outwardly, at least, there seems much to support to the
idolaters’ standpoint. Since Josiahs’ reformation Judah had experienced nothing
but trouble and calamity. Could outward events alone adjudicate between these
two interpretations? Is there always an immediate correspondence between
godliness and prosperity? Cf. Ps. 73.
3.
Chapter 45. Baruch was the son of a princely house. His brother Seriah held an important office
under the king (see 51:59), and he himself probably had ambitions (45:5). His work for Jeremiah would reveal to him the
doom of the city and the kingdom. What were his natural reactions? What was
God’s message to him, and what may we learn from it for ourselves? Was Baruch’s
distress greater than the Lord’s in having so to deal with His people (verse
4)? Cf. Mk. 10:42-45; Mt. 10:24, 25a.
Notes
1.
44:1. The three cities represent Jewish settlements in northern
Egypt, and Pathros was the name given to Upper (i.e., southern) Egypt.
2.
44:17. ‘The queen of heaven’: see Note on 7:18
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