Jeremiah (1-31) 27:9 Commentary and Bible Study

Jeremiah’s message to the surrounding nations continues. Now there is a solemn warning against their prophets and priests who might try and tell them otherwise. Like all false prophets, they told their rulers what they thought they wanted to hear, but Jeremiah warns that they are not to be trusted if they disagree with what God is saying through him. ‘Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers, which speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon.’ ‘For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land.’ That will be the effect on them if they pay heed to their prophets for the Lord will punish them by driving them out of their lands. Well, the prophets have lied so much. They have been phony for so long that they are quite deluded. They actually think their statements – whatever comes into their head – are true. But God is not speaking through them; they are following their own imaginations. In verse 11 God gives them his promise to encourage them to submit to Babylon. ‘But the nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, those will I let remain still in their own land, saith the LORD; and they shall till it, and dwell therein.’ There will be reasonable normality. Now up to this point Jeremiah is speaking to the kings of the nations immediately neighbouring. It is remarkable that so much space is given to recording the fact that the very same things preached to Judah were preached to her enemy nations in the immediate neighbourhood. That foreshadows what Christ will do in the Christian era in taking the message far beyond the house of Israel to the Gentile nations everywhere.