Do you still write letters? I admit that I send e-mail (and sometimes texts) much more often than writing something out by hand. My handwriting also pretty much went off the rails in college so I am probably doing friends and family a favor by sharing something with them that they can actually read! Still, thank-you notes get hand-written most of the time in our household, and we leave thank-you notes from others on the counter for everyone to read.
The next series of articles is from Jeremiah 29. Let’s see how that chapter starts out.
This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said:
Jeremiah 29:1-3 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jer.29.1-3.NIV
This is the introduction to the contents of a letter. It might seem strange reading someone else’s mail, but apparently letters in the past were sometimes meant to be read by multiple parties (see Colossians 4:16, for instance, and Revelation 2:7), and since God had this letter recorded in His Word (the Bible), it’s OK for us to read it.
The “From” party (i.e., the sender) is Jeremiah, and he’s sending the letter from Jerusalem.
Apparently, he was not considered valuable enough to the Babylonian empire to be exiled with others listed here. Can you imagine the feeling of insult added to injury for those who were left in Jerusalem? Not only had the city endured a siege, and had been overrun by Nebuchadnezzar’s forces when the king surrendered, but now you were still there because Babylon didn’t consider you important enough to carry off?
Verse 2 here lists a number of categories of Israelite people who were taken to Babylon. Daniel 1:1-4 and 2 Kings 24:14 provide additional perspectives (although there were apparently 2-3 times when Israelites were exiled from Jerusalem, so we must read and compare multiple books of the Bible to assemble a larger history). At some point, though, if you were still in Jerusalem, you weren’t part of the royal family, you weren’t part of the nobility, you weren’t a “skilled worker” (or craftsman, per NASB), and you weren’t an “artisan” (or metalworker, per NASB). According to 2 Kings, you probably weren’t one of “the prominent people of the land”, and you weren’t one of the “fighting men” that were exiled. In fact, 2 Kings 24:14 includes the statement, “Only the poorest people of the land were left.” That’s rough!
In the upcoming recorded in this chapter, the “To” party (i.e., the recipients) was the Israelites that had been exiled to Babylon (from Jerusalem).
The list starts off with “the surviving elders among the exiles”, but then adds priests and prophets, followed by “all the other people” in this situation. Now, we know that all people are valuable, since humankind was created by God, in His image. However, those who were exiled to Babylon seem like what we might call upper- and middle-class citizens, and if those left in Jerusalem were embarrassed to not be valuable enough to be “chosen”, then those who were exiled would probably be embarrassed to have been conquered by another nation.
I don’t know much about the two people who carried the letter, but for a letter that’s important, having a trustworthy messenger is valuable.
FYI, It sounds to me like Zedekiah was left in Judah as a puppet ruler for Nebuchadnezzar (see 2 Kings 24:15-17), and he was sending one or both of these men to Babylon anyway, so maybe Jeremiah leveraged this opportunity to send a letter along with those who were already making the journey.
By the way, Zedekiah himself rebels against Babylon about 9 years later, and Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem again (see 2 Kings 25:1-21). This time, after the siege gets really ugly, the Babylonians win again, and this time they burn the temple, the palace, and other important buildings, and break down the walls of Jerusalem.
Looking ahead a little bit, for the exiles that had been taken to Babylon before this destruction of Jerusalem, it might have been easier for false prophets to persuade them that they would be going back home soon. However, Jeremiah had a message of God’s truth (which history has since confirmed) for the people. I encourage you to read all of Jeremiah 29 as we look further into it over the next few articles.
From Sunday School lesson prepared for July 9, 2023
References:
- The Lookout, July 9, 2023, © 2023 Christian Standard Media.
- Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
- Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation.
- The College Press NIV Commentary – Jeremiah-Lamentations, by Timothy M. Willis. © 2002 College Press Publishing Co.
Those Who Sin Differently 