Jeremiah 21

The Way of Life and the Way of Death

Zedekiah asks for a miracle while Babylon besieges the city, and Jeremiah answers that the Lord Himself is now the enemy, but that anyone who leaves the city may still live.

The reign of Zedekiah (597–586 B.C. by the Bible Dictionary), during the siege of Jerusalem, which began in his ninth year; the chapter gives no date of its own Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

Background

Zedekiah is the last king of Judah, and Babylon has put him on the throne and now has his city surrounded.

Zedekiah is the last king of Judah, and Babylon has put him on the throne and now has his city surrounded. The chapter does not date itself, but verse 4 shows the siege already under way, and the historical books place its start in “the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month” (2 Kgs. 25:1); it lasted “unto the eleventh year” (2 Kgs. 25:2). The king sends two men to ask Jeremiah for a word from the Lord, hoping for a rescue.

Jeremiah's reply “foretells the siege, captivity, and destruction of Jerusalem,” and it comes in three parts: there will be no rescue (verses 3–7); the people may still save their lives by leaving the city (verses 8–10); and the royal house is told what it still owes (verses 11–14). Chapters 21–23 form a group of prophecies “on pastors or rulers of the people,” so this chapter opens a run of words addressed to kings and shepherds.

The chapter also stands next to the Book of Mormon. Lehi's call came in Zedekiah's first year, with the same warning that Jerusalem “must be destroyed” (1 Ne. 1:4). Jeremiah 21 shows that warning at the point of fulfillment.

The thread through the chapter

Jeremiah 21 answers a king who hopes for one of God's “wondrous works” (verse 2), the kind of rescue Jerusalem had known under Hezekiah.

Jeremiah 21 answers a king who hopes for one of God's “wondrous works” (verse 2), the kind of rescue Jerusalem had known under Hezekiah. The Lord answers that He will act with all His power, but against the city. The same “outstretched hand and strong arm” that brought Israel out of Egypt is now raised against Jerusalem (verse 5), and the weapons the defenders hold are turned back into the city (verse 4).

Yet the chapter does not end with a closed door. In the middle, Jeremiah is told to set before the people “the way of life, and the way of death” (verse 8), the choice Moses put to Israel at the end of his life. The choice is humbling: life lies outside the walls, in surrender to the enemy, and death lies inside, in the place the people trusted. The final verses go back to the king's house and to the city's pride (“Who shall come down against us?”), and show why that trust had failed. Judgment is certain; what remains open is who will choose to live.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–2

The king asks for a miracle

In plain words

King Zedekiah sent Pashur son of Melchiah and Zephaniah the priest, son of Maaseiah, to Jeremiah with a request: “Ask the Lord for us, because Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is making war on us. Perhaps the Lord will deal with us as in all His wonderful works, and the king will withdraw from us.”

1 The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD, when king Zedekiah sent unto him Pashur the son of Melchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, saying,

Context #

Two envoys, and not the Pashur of chapter 20

The two men the king sends were officials Jeremiah would meet again, and the first is a different Pashur from the one who put Jeremiah in the stocks.

The two men the king sends were officials Jeremiah would meet again, and the first is a different Pashur from the one who put Jeremiah in the stocks. That earlier Pashur was “the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord” (Jer. 20:1). This one is “the son of Melchiah” (spelled Malchiah in Jer. 38:1). The Church edition's footnote sends the reader to both chapters, but the text gives the two men different fathers.

On one reading, the son of Malchiah is a court official rather than a priest, since “he is not called a priest, as is the case with Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, and with Pashur the son of Immer.” That fits his later appearance: in Jer. 38:1–4 a Pashur son of Malchiah is among the “princes” who ask the king to put Jeremiah to death. The man sent to ask for a word from the Lord becomes one of those who want the prophet silenced.

Zephaniah is a priest of rank. He is “the second priest” in Jer. 52:24, is sent to Jeremiah again in Jer. 37:3, and was the priest to whom a letter from Babylon was addressed and who “read this letter in the ears of Jeremiah” (Jer. 29:25–29). So the king's delegation sets a court officer beside a senior priest, both people Jeremiah knew.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Jeremiah, Trans. David Patrick and James Kennedy. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874–1880; in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

2 Inquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against us; if so be that the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that he may go up from us.

Context #

The king hopes for another Hezekiah

Zedekiah hopes for a miracle like the one that saved the city a century earlier, and one reading takes his “wondrous works” to look back to that rescue under Hezekiah.

Zedekiah hopes for a miracle like the one that saved the city a century earlier, and one reading takes his “wondrous works” to look back to that rescue under Hezekiah. When Assyria besieged Jerusalem, Hezekiah sent his officials “covered with sackcloth” to “Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz” (2 Kgs. 19:2), and “that night” the angel of the Lord “smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand” (2 Kgs. 19:35). That rescue “strengthened the belief that the Lord would preserve Jerusalem and its temple from all enemies.” The king's closing words, “that he may go up from us,” mean that Nebuchadrezzar would withdraw, as the Babylonians briefly did when an Egyptian army approached (Jer. 37:5).

The king asks the prophet to “inquire” of the Lord, but the answer in the next verses is that the Lord will use that same power on the other side.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scripture Central, “Why Did Some in Lehi’s Time Believe that Jerusalem Could Not Be Destroyed?”, KnoWhy #451. Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Jeremiah, Trans. David Patrick and James Kennedy. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874–1880; in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

Verses 3–7

No rescue; the Lord fights against the city

In plain words

Jeremiah told them to say to Zedekiah: “The Lord God of Israel says: I will turn back the weapons in your hands, which you are using against the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans outside the walls, and gather them into the middle of this city. I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a strong arm, in anger and fury. I will strike the people of this city, man and beast, and they will die of a great plague. After that I will hand Zedekiah, his servants, and the survivors over to Nebuchadnezzar and to their enemies, and he will kill them without pity.”

3 Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say to Zedekiah:

4 Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city.

5 And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.

Related Scriptures #

The Exodus power turned against Israel

The words “an outstretched hand and a strong arm” are the language of the Exodus, now used against Israel.

The words “an outstretched hand and a strong arm” are the language of the Exodus, now used against Israel. Moses asks whether God ever took a nation from another nation “by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt” (Deut. 4:34), the verse the Church edition's footnote gives here. In Egypt, the arm worked for Israel against Pharaoh; here it works against Israel on the side of Babylon.

Verse 4 shows what this means at the wall. The weapons the defenders are using against the besiegers are turned back and gathered “into the midst of this city”: the fight outside the walls is lost, and what follows happens inside them.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

6 And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.

7 And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.

Related Scriptures #

Zedekiah and Lehi's Jerusalem

This is the king in whose first year Lehi was called, and the chapter describes what Lehi was warned would come.

This is the king in whose first year Lehi was called, and the chapter describes what Lehi was warned would come. Nephi says that “in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah” many prophets were prophesying that “the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed” (1 Ne. 1:4). Lehi read in his vision “that it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword, and many should be carried away captive into Babylon” (1 Ne. 1:13). The Church edition footnotes Jeremiah 21 to these verses.

Verse 7 is the moment of fulfillment: Zedekiah, his servants, and those left alive are handed to Nebuchadrezzar. How it ended for Zedekiah is told in Jer. 52:10–11: his sons were killed before his eyes, and he was blinded and taken to Babylon. Yet the Book of Mormon (Hel. 8:21) shows that “not all of the sons of Zedekiah were slain,” for “one son, Mulek, came to the Western Hemisphere.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Zedekiah”, Bible Dictionary.

Verses 8–10

The way of life and the way of death

In plain words

“To this people say: I set before you the way of life and the way of death. Whoever stays in this city will die by sword, famine, or plague, but whoever goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans will live, and will keep his life as a prize of war. I have set My face against this city for harm, not good. It will be given to the king of Babylon, and he will burn it.”

8 And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.

Related Scriptures #

Moses's choice, set before Judah again

Jeremiah repeats the choice Moses gave Israel: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deut. 30:19).

Jeremiah repeats the choice Moses gave Israel: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deut. 30:19). The Church edition footnotes verse 8 to Deuteronomy 30:15, and Moses there ties the choice to hearing the Lord and not being “drawn away” to “worship other gods” (Deut. 30:17).

The footnotes also point to Jesus's “strait” gate and “narrow” way, which “leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7:14), and to the angel's words to Nephi about a work that will either convince people “unto peace and life eternal” or give them over to “captivity” and destruction (1 Ne. 14:7). So the two ways are a pattern of scripture, not a new idea of the siege: each time, one is life and one is death, and the person must choose.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

9 He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth out, and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey.

Context #

Why surrender sounded like treason

Jeremiah tells the people that survival means leaving the city and giving themselves up, which is why he was taken for a traitor.

Jeremiah tells the people that survival means leaving the city and giving themselves up, which is why he was taken for a traitor. “He that remaineth in this city shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans shall live” (Jer. 38:2), he says again later. The princes answer that “he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city” (Jer. 38:4). He “was viewed as a traitor and a subversive,” but he “was not speaking from a political point of view; he spoke for the Lord.” The Church edition's footnote gives “surrenders” for “falleth.”

The phrase “his life shall be unto him for a prey” uses the Hebrew word for the spoil of war (shalal, “booty, spoil”): his life is the one prize he carries away, which is to say that his “life shall be spared.” The same words are given as a promise to Ebed-melech, “thy life shall be for a prey unto thee: because thou hast put thy trust in me” (Jer. 39:18), and to Baruch, “thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest” (Jer. 45:5), the passages the footnote cites. In a ruined city, life itself is the only spoil, and the Lord gives it to those who trust Him.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Chapter 24: The Babylonian Captivity (Jeremiah 20–22; 24–29; 32; 34–45; 52; Lamentations), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

10 For I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good, saith the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

Related Scriptures #

A firm verdict that leaves a way out

The sentence on the city was carried out as spoken. When the walls fell, Nebuzar-adan “burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem” (Jer. 52:13).

Yet the verdict was not without a condition. Later in the siege Jeremiah gave Zedekiah a choice: “If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire,” but if not, “they shall burn it with fire” (Jer. 38:17–18). The prophecy said what would happen if the people kept their course, and the Lord left open what would happen if they did not.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 11–14

To the house of David and the city on the heights

In plain words

To the royal house: “House of David, this is the Lord's word: Do justice in the morning, and rescue the robbed from the hand of the oppressor, or My anger will break out like a fire no one can put out, because of your evil deeds. I am against you who live in the valley, you rock on the plain, who say, ‘Who can come down against us? Who can get into our homes?’ I will punish you for what you have done, and light a fire in her forest that will burn everything around it.”

11 And touching the house of the king of Judah, say, Hear ye the word of the LORD;

12 O house of David, thus saith the LORD; Execute judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

Related Scriptures #

One last condition for the house of David

The royal house is told that it still has something to do: judge fairly and rescue “him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.”

The royal house is told that it still has something to do: judge fairly and rescue “him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.” “In the morning” here means every morning, almost continually: justice is to be done day after day, not now and then. The same charge opens the next chapter, in nearly the same words: “Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor” (Jer. 22:3).

That chapter spells out the two outcomes. If the king does this, “kings sitting upon the throne of David” will still enter the palace gates (Jer. 22:4); if not, “I swear by myself, saith the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation” (Jer. 22:5). If “the king and his people would turn back to righteousness, the throne of David would be preserved.” So the rulers' task is justice for the oppressed, and the house of David's future still depends on it.

13 Behold, I am against thee, O inhabitant of the valley, and rock of the plain, saith the LORD; which say, Who shall come down against us? or who shall enter into our habitations?

Imagery #

The city that thought it could not be reached

The “valley” and the “rock of the plain” describe Jerusalem, on one reading, by its strong position, the thing its people trusted.

The “valley” and the “rock of the plain” describe Jerusalem, on one reading, by its strong position, the thing its people trusted. The city is a valley because it was “encircled by mountains of greater height,” and the rock is “specially” Mount Zion; “the two designations are chosen to indicate the strong situation of Jerusalem,” and the threat is aimed at “citizens of Jerusalem, who vaunted the impregnableness of their city.” Their boast is quoted: “Who shall come down against us? or who shall enter into our habitations?”

The confidence had a history. After Hezekiah's deliverance, “when the Babylonian armies laid siege to Jerusalem about a hundred years later, there were many in the city who firmly believed it could not be conquered,” and Hezekiah “had gone to great lengths to fortify Jerusalem and prepare it for siege.” The Lord's reply, “I am against thee,” answers that boast directly.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Jeremiah, Trans. David Patrick and James Kennedy. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874–1880; in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Scripture Central, “Why Did Some in Lehi’s Time Believe that Jerusalem Could Not Be Destroyed?”, KnoWhy #451.

14 But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things round about it.

Imagery #

The forest is the city

The “forest” in which the Lord kindles a fire is Jerusalem, not an actual wood.

The “forest” in which the Lord kindles a fire is Jerusalem, not an actual wood. One reading is that “the city is a forest of houses,” which fits the fire that consumed “all the houses of Jerusalem” (Jer. 52:13) and the phrase “all things round about it.” The verse ends the chapter on the image of a fire that spreads beyond what anyone planned, the same fire the Lord warned of in verse 12: “lest my fury go out like fire, and burn that none can quench it.”

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Jeremiah, Trans. David Patrick and James Kennedy. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874–1880; in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing Christ in Jeremiah 21

The choice in verse 8 is the one Moses set before Israel, and the Book of Mormon names the one through whom life is offered. Lehi teaches his son Jacob that people “are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death” (2 Ne. 2:27). Jerusalem's people are offered life by leaving the walls they trusted. Christ's way is the “narrow” way “which leadeth unto life” (Matt. 7:14), and the chapter shows how hard it is to leave a place that feels safe in order to find it.

Worth exploring next

Jer. 22:1–9, which continues the word to the house of David and gives its two outcomes.
Jer. 37:1–10 and Jer. 38:1–28, where the same men and the same counsel to surrender appear during the siege.
2 Kgs. 18:13–19:37, the Hezekiah story that Zedekiah hoped to see repeated.
1 Ne. 1:4–20, Lehi's call and warning in Zedekiah's first year.

Sources & further reading

“Jeremiah”, Bible Dictionary.
“Zedekiah”, Bible Dictionary.
The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Chapter 24: The Babylonian Captivity (Jeremiah 20–22; 24–29; 32; 34–45; 52; Lamentations), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003).
Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Jeremiah, Trans. David Patrick and James Kennedy. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874–1880; in Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Scripture Central, “Why Did Some in Lehi’s Time Believe that Jerusalem Could Not Be Destroyed?”, KnoWhy #451.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

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