Jeremiah 24King James Version
The vision of two baskets of figs set before the temple, one very good and one very bad. The good figs are those already carried captive to Babylon. God will set his eyes on them for good. The bad figs are Zedekiah and his court, who will be given over to the sword.
God shows Jeremiah two baskets of figs at the temple. The good figs represent the first exiles taken to Babylon: God will watch over them, bring them back, and give them a heart to know him. The bad figs represent Zedekiah and those who stayed in Jerusalem or fled to Egypt: they will be made a reproach and a byword among all nations.
The people who appeared to be judged, the early exiles taken to Babylon, are actually the ones God is preserving. The ones who stayed and appeared to escape are the ones being abandoned.
7: "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." The good figs get a heart transplant, not just a geography change.
The first deportation happened in 597 BC when Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin, the royal court, the skilled workers, and ten thousand citizens to Babylon. The people left in Jerusalem probably felt they had avoided the worst. Jeremiah's vision reversed that reading entirely.
The first exiles under Jehoiachin, represented by the good figs. Zedekiah and his officials and those who went to Egypt, represented by the rotten figs. God, who reads the two baskets for Jeremiah.
The fig vision inverted the common assumption that exile was pure punishment and that remaining in Jerusalem meant favor. Theologically it established a principle that runs through the rest of the book and into Ezekiel: the remnant with a future is in Babylon, not Jerusalem. This shaped how the exilic community understood its own situation.
For when what looks like judgment is actually preservation, and what looks like survival is actually the deeper abandonment. The counterintuitive read on suffering is hard to hold but the chapter insists on it.
1The LORD shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the LORD, after that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon.
2One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.
3Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.
4Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
5Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.
6For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.
7And 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.
8And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt:
9And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.
10And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers.