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20 May. Jeremiah chapters 23-25
As the day of exile draws nearer, Jeremiah’s words become still more urgent. The forthcoming fate of the people is spelt out more clearly, and in chapter 23 Jeremiah singles out the ‘prophets’ for particular condemnation, for they take their own ideas and dreams and tell them out in the name of the Lord. That is clearly ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain’ – breaking one of the ten commandments. But more than that, it is leading people astray by giving them false hopes of peace and not giving God’s true message of punishment which is what he has given to Jeremiah.
In chapter 24 the story jumps forward to after the exile has happened, and a difference is made clear: the people who are taken into exile (generally speaking, the educated classes and skilled workmen), although they are not guiltless, will be allowed to return (or rather, their descendants will, after 70 years), but the king, priests, and so-called prophets who are more guilty than the ordinary people will not – they were killed and not taken alive.
Confusingly, chapter 25 then jumps back in time to the beginning of Jeremiah’s prophecies, when the captivity is first predicted, and seventy years given as its length. That was much longer even than the forty years of the Israelites’ ‘exile’ from Egypt before they were given the land of Canaan, and suggests that the sins of idolatry, greed and so on in Jehoiachin’s time were worse than among the people of the Exodus.