Jeremiah 21King James Version
King Zedekiah sends to ask if perhaps the Lord will do a miracle and turn the Babylonians away. Jeremiah answers that God himself will fight against them. Whoever stays in the city dies; whoever surrenders lives. Choose life.
King Zedekiah sends messengers to Jeremiah as the Babylonian siege begins. Can Jeremiah ask for deliverance? Jeremiah's answer is the opposite of what they came for: God himself is fighting against Jerusalem. The way of life is surrender to Babylon. The way of death is to resist. Do justice or fire will consume the royal house's gates.
The king sends asking for a miracle; the prophet tells him to surrender. God is not on Jerusalem's side in this siege; he is directing it.
8: "Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death." The offer is there. The way of life is surrender to the thing that looks like defeat.
The siege of Jerusalem begins in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, around 588 BC. Nebuchadnezzar has come back after a first deportation in 597. The city is surrounded. Zedekiah is afraid. His officials are still arguing about whether to resist or surrender. Jeremiah has been saying surrender for years and is still saying it, now with Babylonian siege works visible from the walls.
Zedekiah, Judah's last king, desperate enough to ask Jeremiah for a word. Jeremiah, who delivers the most unwelcome possible answer. Nebuchadnezzar, the instrument of God's judgment, visible in the hills around the city.
The irony of the message is layered: the king asks for the kind of miraculous deliverance that happened under Hezekiah when the Assyrians retreated. Jeremiah tells him: that is not this situation. The way of life in this chapter is the way of apparent political capitulation. The reversal of expected theology is complete.
For when someone in authority comes to you for the answer that makes everything okay and the honest answer is not that. Jeremiah does not soften the message for the king's benefit.
1The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, when king Zedekiah sent unto him Pashur the son of Melchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, saying,
2Enquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against us; if so be that the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that he may go up from us.
3Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say to Zedekiah:
4Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city.
5And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.
6And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.
7And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.
8And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.
9He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth out, and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey.
10For I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good, saith the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.
11And touching the house of the king of Judah, say, Hear ye the word of the LORD;
12O house of David, thus saith the LORD; Execute judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.
13Behold, I am against thee, O inhabitant of the valley, and rock of the plain, saith the LORD; which say, Who shall come down against us? or who shall enter into our habitations?
14But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things round about it.