Year 3, Day 77: Jeremiah 24

Captivity begins

At the beginning of Jeremiah 24 we hear that king Nebuchadnezzar has already taken some of the people in Jerusalem captive.  You can read this account in 2 Kings 24:8-16.  The interesting thing about this story is that it really does show us the cycle of kingdom conquest.

So often we think that a nation will rise up against another nation and just take them over.  But often, that isn’t really what happens.  One nation rises up and overthrows a neighboring nation.  But the aggressor isn’t often set-up to absorb the new nation into their political framework.  At the very least, they can’t deal with all the newly conquered people.  So usually what the aggressor nation does is set up a government within the conquered kingdom in which the newly appointed leaders are favorably disposed to the conquering nation.

This helps us understand how when Jerusalem is besieged and one king is taken that we still end up with a king on the throne.  Nebuchadnezzar is trying to establish loyal vassals in leadership positions.

Resources Drained

However, this doesn’t mean that the country still has good leadership and resources.  Notice how this chapter begins.  The king, the craftsmen, the court official, and the metal smiths were all dragged off to Babylon.  Nebuchadnezzar may have allowed a king to rule in Jerusalem, but it was a puppet court.  The resources and the ability to manage any resources weren’t present.

Parable of the Figs

After the king and his court officials have been dragged off, Jeremiah gets a really neat vision.  Jeremiah sees two baskets of fruit.  One basket is incredibly ripe – perfectly ripe if you will.  The other basket is rotten and inedible.

As we expect, God tells Jeremiah that the perfectly ripe fruit represents the faithful Hebrew people.  We also hear, as we expect, that the rotten and spoiled basket of figs represents the unfaithful Hebrew people.  So far, we have not gotten anything unusual.

Yet, in what comes next we do discover something unusual.  God tells Jeremiah that the ripe figs are some of the people who have been dragged off to captivity.  Hear this out.  The faithful people – the ones that God promises to plant and to prosper – as people who are already in captivity.  God’s faithful are already gone!

Now, you may be asking why it is that this is so groundbreaking.  There are two reasons.  First, we typically think of captives as people who are being punished.  We think of captives as the people who were disobedient.  This is not what God is saying at all.  Some of the captives are people that are the most faithful and who are still within God’s love.  What’s the old saying?  Sometimes bad things happen to good people.

The second reason that this is surprising is because of what is going to happen to the rotten fruit.  God tells Jeremiah that the rotten fruit are especially the ones who are left in Jerusalem.  God is going to turn them into a horror to the other nations.  They are going to be a reproach to the world.

Notice what God is saying to Jeremiah?  God actually got the good fruit out of the way so that the bad fruit could just go ahead and spoil.  The good fruit was removed from Jerusalem so that the bad fruit could decompose, rot, and become useless.  All of a sudden captivity doesn’t look like “bad things happening to good people” after all.  All of sudden, captivity almost looks like a blessing.

God will be with those good fruit.  God promises to plant them.  God would be with them in spite of their difficulties – and regardless of how positive I make it sound above there were plenty of difficulties with respect to being a captive race among another group of people.  But God would not abandon them.  He would not forget them.  He will be their God, and they shall return to Him with their whole heart.

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