Jeremiah (1-31) 23:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Then Jeremiah speaks of a partial fulfilment of the prophecy. ‘Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt’ – redemption from bondage in Egypt will no longer be the great story. Now the great story will be ‘The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country [Babylon], and from all countries whither I had driven them [in the Babylonian Empire]; and they shall dwell in their own land.’ So whereas verse 7 is looking forward to the Messiah, verse 8 is coming back to the first stage of the fulfilment of this kind of prophecy: the return of a remnant. In order that the Lord our righteousness may come, that God may come in the flesh; in order that that may happen, there will be before it another liberation, another setting free from captivity of the people of God so that they can be in their own land, so that the Messiah can be born there. That is a kind of preparatory statement. I remember once being at a lecture where the lecturer was claiming that the prophet Jeremiah could not possibly have been talking about the Messiah, but was hoping for a great king who would come and set the people free from the Babylonian captivity and that it would happen. The idea was this: verses 5 and 6 are contradicted by verses 7 and 8. Verses 5 and 6 on their own, can be twisted, the lecturer said, to sound like the Messiah. But when you come to verses 7 and 8, it is, after all, quite clear, that the prophet is talking about an ordinary setting free from captivity and return to their homeland for the Jews, and nothing more exalted. Well, of course, that's ridiculous. Because in verses 5 and 6, he is most certainly talking about the coming of God in the flesh, Jehovah our righteousness, and in verses 7 and 8, he's merely saying that the people of God will physically be set free from Babylon, and come home to their own country so that Messiah can be born among his own people. Verses 7 and 8 are the prediction of the geographical preparation for the great coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, predicted in verses 5 and 6. But restoration and renewal are locked in something totally new and different and fresh.