Jeremiah 43
Febuary 19, 2024 2:18 PM
Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com
20240219
Jer 43:1 And it came to pass, that when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking unto all the people all the words of the LORD their God, for which the LORD their God had sent him to them, even all these words,
Although I try to make each chapter of this commentary to stand on its own, you may become confused and not understand the entire import of what I am trying to say in certain lessons, as some chapters are intimately connected to each other. Such is the case here. Chapter 42 and 43 go hand in hand.
In the last chapter, we heard the story of Johanan and the remnant approach Jeremiah about seeking the will of God for them, as they planned to flee to Egypt after the governor Gedaliah, who was installed by the Babylonians, was murdered. Jeremiah received the word and delivered it. However at the end of the chapter, we get the strong sense that God has shown the prophet that the people were completely insincere in asking direction of Yahweh.
Jer 43:2 Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud (zade – arrogant, presumptuous, insolent) men, saying unto Jeremiah, Thou speakest (daw-bar) falsely (sheh-ker – a sham, a lie): the LORD our God hath not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there:
Azariah is the brother of Jezaniah, who we met in Jer 42:1. He, along with Johanan, the leader of this group, were specifically mentioned as approaching Jeremiah to seek God on their behalf. They now show clearly what was in their hearts all this time, which now perfectly explains why God warned them at the end of the previous chapter.
We see that God labels these people as proud – arrogant, presumptuous and insolent. That is not how any child of God wants to be remembered! And presumptuous they were. They were so sure that God would agree with their strategy of fleeing Judah after the assassination. Surely the safest place to preserve God’s remnant would be in Egypt.
How many times does the scripture warn us not to go back into Egypt? Do not turn back into your old lifestyle or bad habits. What does the word say?
Act 7:39 To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,
Act 7:40 Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
Their hearts had certainly slid back, back into the type of sins that Egypt represented. We shall see further proof of these things when we examine chapter 44.
Here is the madness, the insanity of sin. Jeremiah was the only prophet that had accurately predicted what had just come to pass. All the false prophets preached the exact opposite. All of them were dead or exiled. These survivors were so fortunate to still have the only man in all the land who could hear the real voice of God. They had physical, scientific proof that Jeremiah spoke for God. Yet they now call him a liar. This goes to prove the words of Jesus found in Luke:
Luk 16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
Luk 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Luk 16:29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
Luk 16:30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
Luk 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Jesus knew men’s hearts. If they refuse to believe the word, you can give them physical, scientific proof and they will not be persuaded, because their mind is already made up. The clearest example of this is when we look at the Grand Canyon, the most infallible proof of the global flood that you can imagine, and most refuse to be persuaded. They still cling to the lie of millions of years and whatever fairy tale the ‘scientists’ tell them. This is why we are not to be overly surprised when so many will simply not believe. We have millions of people who have perished from the vax, yet most still are not persuaded. What did Jesus say about those types of people?
Mat_15:14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Clearly Johanan and all these ‘proud boys’ had things all figured out. Why they even pretended that they were interested in what God had to say is not clear. I suppose if God happened to agree with their decision, so much the better. Maybe there were some influential people in this group who still feared God, so for political purposes they went through the motions of asking God for his opinion.
Jer 43:3 But Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on (seduces, entices) against us, for to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon.
Wicked men always find a scapegoat. Instead of believing the word, they come up with an excuse why Jeremiah must be lying, even though he’s been 100% accurate up until now.
We haven’t heard of Baruch for quite a while. The last time was in the days of Jehoiakim (Jer 36:32). Some tradition says that we was in Babylon at the time of the sack of Jerusalem. He may of been advocating a total submission to Babylon amongst the exiles, based on the prophecies of Jeremiah. His words may of filtered back to those left in the city under siege. Thus this charge, while totally false, may of been based on a tiny seed of plausibility, which made it all the more diabolical.
These people had a fear instilled in them that made every other fear irrelevant. Maybe they heard exaggerated tales of what happens to those who get sent to Babylon. Maybe tales of gruesome tortures and dark pagan practices. Things that these rebellious fighters would use to keep people fighting, when all hope was long lost.
Think about the exact parallel that was inserted in people’s brains since 2020. One fear was instilled to such a deep level, that it blotted out every other. The fear of catching covid. The scary case count, the terrifying death count. Whatever they told us to do to stay safe, we did without question, and screamed hatred and murder upon everyone who didn’t do exactly what our wonderful leaders said. Don’t you know they were trying to save us?
So we lost the fear of injecting unknown substances into our bodies. Of injecting unknown substances into our children and even our babies. Our fear of losing our livelihoods by shutting down our businesses. Our fear of losing our souls as we shut down our churches. Nothing mattered, but doing any and everything possible to not catch covid.
Fear became the first global ruler of the planet. Think of him as a forerunner, a dark John the Baptist, so to speak, of the man of lawlessness that is about to come.
Jer 43:4 So Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, and all the people, obeyed not the voice of the LORD, to dwell in the land of Judah.
You want to cry. You want to scream. No matter how many times you have brought nothing but disaster down upon yourselves and your loved ones, you have not learned one single thing. It seemed as if their brains were frozen in place, incapable of grasping even one new life lesson. God gave them the simplest of commands – just stay put. Do nothing. Yet somehow these dark, depraved, totally corrupted hearts had something in them that just could not help but do the exact opposite of what God said. Kind of makes me think of these transgender freaks. Cutting off your own testicles. Grafting skin and other things from parts of your body and trying to sew them somewhere else. Dressing not as a woman, but in the most bizarre costumes that no self respecting clown would ever think of wearing. The pain, the anger, the demons within torturing them. Yet they proudly screech and shriek out their queerness, their pride.
How has humanity come to this? To of been created in the image of Yehovah, and to be seduced into allowing themselves to be mutilated into some sort of monstrosity? To allow our very own dna to be merged with the dna of snakes and other creeping things. To watch western civilization crumble before our very eyes, and demand that our leaders accelerate the process.
And there are still people that say that this is the most exciting time to ever be alive, as if we are watching some entertaining Hollywood blockbuster. What we are really watching is the degeneration and total extinction of all mankind.
I am not excited.
Jer 43:5 But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all nations, whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah;
Jer 43:6 Even men, and women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah.
Jer 43:7 So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: thus came they even to Tahpanhes.
By wicked men the utter depopulation of the land was fulfilled (Jer 24:8-10):
Jer 24:8 And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt:
Jer 24:9 And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them.
Jer 24:10 And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers.
Men may resolve to not obey the word of God, but God in his sovereignty and infinite wisdom can take the acts of rebellious men and use them to actually fulfill the word they so greatly despise.
Tahpenes is not spoken of except in Jeremiah (Jer 2:16, 43:8-9, 44:1, 46:14). The apocryphal book of Judith (Jud 1:9) speaks of it. It was a town on the north east frontier of Egypt. Egypt, while humbled by Babylon at this time, still was an independent kingdom to some degree.
These verses 5 to 7 are all taken together to show how God wanted to make sure that all the key players are noted and recognized for all history. There are those on God’s side – Jeremiah and Baruch. Baruch must of been back in Judah by the time the assassination of Gedaliah took place. Johanan was the man God saw as being chiefly responsible for this latest rebellion, so he is mentioned again. Yet he could not of done what he did without his militia. Obviously, they were in total agreement with his actions.
The sad thing is that it sounds like there were several folks that had bugged out of Judah before it fell. They returned, thinking it was safe to dwell there once more. However, they were forcibly rounded up by this no name guy called Johanan and forced to be on the move once again. It specifically stated that he and his militia made entire families get up and follow him to Egypt. Not only them, but all the women of the royal bloodline that had survived, and everyone who was in any way part of the court of Gedaliah, that the king of Babylon had put in charge. It’s funny that although he refused to listen to Jeremiah, he forced him to come along. I guess he didn’t want any opponents of his schemes out in the open where he couldn’t control them. So often we replace one form of tyranny with another.
Without repentance, hard times cause people to revert to the behaviors they once were enslaved in. When God doesn’t seem to come through, how many believers revert to alcohol, drugs, pornography, video games, trying to find some temporary pleasure and relief from reality? At the first sign God is not giving them what they want, they run back to Egypt. They look back, like Lot’s wife.
Another important point is that once you get to final judgment time, the process itself is not as redemptive as people seem to believe. None of this remnant is said to of repented, their hearts are as hard as before judgment fell. Final judgment is given to punish sin, and to leave the earth with a warning of what happens to the truly wicked and apostate. Noah’s flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah were not redemptive acts. A tiny, tiny few were preserved through the judgment (even as Jeremiah and Baruch were here), but the rest all perished. No one got saved as a result of the flood. No one will be saved when the fire of God comes to cleanse the earth a second time.
In the early days of the Judges there seemed to be more of a sensitivity to judgment, and the action needed to fix it. Time and time again it states the people fell away, judgment came, the people recognized they had sinned, they cry out, and God rescues. At the end of the reign of the Davidic kings in Judah, repentance was very hard to find. The nation had run its course. At one time judgment still worked. Now it did not. Thus, the purpose of judgment shifted from urging repentance and return to punishment and scouring the land clean.
Where in Canada’s and America’s history do you think we are? In the early stages like Judges, or at the end of our time like Jeremiah? I think we all know the answer to that. That is why picking the proper pattern is so vital.
Jer 43:8 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying,
Even though Jeremiah was once again being yanked about by the petty political machinations of the tin pot tyrants tormenting the townsfolk, he still could find a place and a state of mind where he could receive the word of the Lord. Even situated in a pagan land, amongst treacherous and rebellious apostates, God still extends his grace and mercy to those who have ears to hear.
Jer 43:9 Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in the clay in the brickkiln (or in the cement of the brickwork), which is at the entry (entranceway) of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah;
We learn here that Tahpanhes was at least one of the residences of Pharaoh. I think the alternate translation of cement of the brickwork makes more sense than clay of the brickkiln, as what would an oven for baking bread or making bricks be doing at the entranceway of Pharaoh’s house?
Once more Jeremiah is asked to pantomime out some act to help deliver a deeper spiritual truth. I think this must of been fraught with some risk, as how would be be able to dig up some of the paving stones of Pharaoh’s driveway and insert large stones underneath without someone coming along and asking him why are you tearing up the bosses car park? And not only that, he had to do it while certain key men of Judah were watching! God, you’re not asking much, are you?
Even if this was to be taken as a literal brick kiln, where clay bricks were fashioned, this thing was in a prominent place and located somewhere where the palace entrance was.
Jer 43:10 And say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant (eh-bed – bondman), and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them.
We can debate brick kiln vs paving stones til the cows come home from drinking at the Nile. The main point is that this kingdom of Egypt, who the people were relying on for safety, was doomed to the same fate as Judah. So not only, were you not going to escape any further Babylonian wrath, but you were about to be immersed into an instant replay of the horrors of Jerusalem’s downfall that you had just barely lived through. Way to go, Johanan! Not the brightest leader one could want.
Jer 43:11 And when he cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as are for death to death; and such as are for captivity to captivity; and such as are for the sword to the sword.
Here you get a sense of the doctrine of fate and destiny. We have free will. Yet our free will locks in a particular destiny into our lives, based on God’s foreknowledge. As a result of God knowing not only our past decisions, but what decisions we will make in the future, he can decree certain fates for each and every one of us. In this case, some will be given to death, most likely by plague, some to slavery, some to be killed in battle.
Note that God is still primarily speaking to these Jewish renegades. Yet he makes no distinction between them and the native Egyptians. It sounds like they will be caught up in the application of God’s wrath on these final few rebels from his own land. If God has your number, there is no place that you can run. It’s amusing to see the elite building these underground bunkers, thinking that as they unleash pure chaos on the planet, they they shall be able to escape. The only reason that they are still alive today is that God suffers them to be so. Once their time is up, they can try and burrow into the heart of the earth but it will do them no good.
Nebuchadnezzar is called God’s slave. We all know how God had a special plan and purpose for him. He even allowed him to live like an animal for 7 years, just to purge him of his pagan pride. Some souls are chosen by God for very unique tasks. We cannot begin to understand the reasons.
Jer 43:12 And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods (elohim) of Egypt; and he shall burn them, and carry them away captives: and he shall array (wrap) himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd putteth (wraps) on his garment (covering); and he shall go forth from thence in peace (shalom).
God says that Egypt will be taken and destroyed with the ease of a shepherd putting on his outer garment. Nebuchadnezzar shall walk away in shalom – in ease and comfort. This sounds like a very easy conquest. All to signify the enormity of the mistake that these Jews are making in following this rebellious Johanan. If they thought they had a hope of resistance behind the walls of Jerusalem, they have absolutely no hope in Egypt.
Jer 43:13 He shall break also the images (idols) of Bethshemesh (house of the sun), that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods (elohim) of the Egyptians shall he burn with fire.
God is taking a special interest in destroying the gods of Egypt. They have had such a long and rich history. Possibly some very powerful fallen watchers ruled here. It was time for them to naphal – to be cast down.
Bethshemesh was the house of the sun, or Heliopolis, as the Greeks would call it. It was time for these worshippers of the sun, who worshipped the creature rather than the creator, to be called to account.
The conclusion of the matter is that when you go contrary to the word, God will walk contrary to you. Purpose in your heart to never be found walking in the footsteps of these hardened fools, but decide once and for all to remain faithful to the Lord, like Jeremiah.
Solitary Man
https://solitaryman.substack.com/
Photos courtesy Depositphotos
