Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 Commentary

Pen Pal

Jeremiah is a compendium of literary genres, as we have already seen a whiplash of sorts from a kind of poetic prophecy to narrative and now to letter.  Those of us who read Hebrew Scripture along with the New Testament may not notice how strange it is to find an epistle embedded in Hebrew Scripture but stop and think a minute if you can recall any other instance of letter-writing in Hebrew Scripture. They are few and far between in general, even more rare in the prophetic genre but, as we know, Jeremiah is a writer and he is content to try his hand at multiple genres in order to get the attention of God’s people. In this case, Jeremiah is responding to an urgent threat.

In the previous chapters of Jeremiah, we’ve read that a false prophet has promised God’s people that their exile will be brief. It is intended as an encouragement: this won’t last long, you can hold on! But what Jeremiah knows is that God has not made a promise to move quickly and that, once the prophecy fails, the damage to people’s faith in the long-term far outweighs any short-term enthusiasm that may come from the errant prophet’s words.  Not to mention, the bold-faced sin of lying and the culpability of leaders who engage in it.

Robert Alter contends this in his translation and commentary of Jeremiah, “This entire episode must be read in the context of Jeremiah’s confrontation with the false prophet Hannah…for Jeremiah, everything in his prophetic mission is at stake in distinguishing between true and false prophecy. Hannah had predicted that the exiles would return to their land in just two years. One infers he had counterparts in Bablyonia itself who were deluding people with similar rosy predictions.”  Jeremiah has to set the record straight and, if that requires writing a letter, so be it.

2nd Person Plural

Jeremiah 29 is a favorite chapter of Scripture for at least two groups of people in the US context.  First are those drawn to the promises, just beyond the limits of this week’s Lectionary texts.  Quoting them here, I suspect many of you will be able to say these verses along with me since they are so familiar in the US-based evangelical subculture at least. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you, not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.’” The text goes on to outline some conditions of the promise. (This part is sometimes cited. Sometimes not.) The promise of God depends on searching for, calling upon and trusting God.

Another group of people are drawn to the verses within the boundaries of our Lectionary text, a set of verses made popular by the late church planter and mentor to many in the Reformed urban ministry network, Timothy Keller. These verses detail our responsibility to love the city, to tend and care for it — even though we are exiles and our sojourn in these places may not last more than one or possibly two decades. Pray for the welfare of the city and, most notably, ACT toward the welfare of the city.

What can go wrong in these interpretation of this passage is when we take them to be (1) singular and (2) immediate.  First, many Christians want to accept the blessing promised in the later verses as a personal transaction with God.  I will seek you and you will prosper me.  Leaving aside the tricky nature of that word “prosper,” the important corrective here is to acknowledge that Jeremiah wasn’t writing to a buddy.  He was writing to “the few surviving elders…to the priests and the prophets, and to all the people Nebuchadnezzar had taken into Babylon from Jerusalem.”  Meaning that both the promise in later verses and the way of life recommended in our text are both intended in the plural and, along with that, the conditions of the promise don’t depend on an individual’s personal devotion but on the collective character of the community.  The second corrective is to take a long view of the promises and directives in Jeremiah 29. It’s right there in verse 10, after the urban church planters have cut off their reading of the text and before the prosperity hopefuls pick up theirs. These directives cover a span of 70 years and these promises won’t come to fruition until after the 70 years are up.  Keeping in mind that 70 is a symbolic number rather than an exact calculation, what Jeremiah wants the people to know is that it will take a lifetime to see the results they hope for. According to the CEB Study Bible, “Although God’s intentions for them are gracious, the Judean refugees must content with displacement and loss.

What this means is that this chapter — often used for a vision of urban church planting and/or a name-it-and-claim-it hope of prosperity — strikes a one-two punch against two of the greatest idols of our culture: the centrality of the individual and the expectation of immediacy. While Scripture is right to say “God is not slow in keeping His promises,” God is much slower than we would like and, perhaps even than we would expect.

Illustration:

Soon and Very Soon?

As I write this, another round of rapt attention to the rapture has come and gone, at least in the US context.  Predictions of this nature have come and gone in the American context since at least the 19th century, when the doctrine of the rapture, as we understand it now, was invented.  In this regard, the disinformation and misinformation, the “deep fakes” made possible through AI technologies are really only variations on a theme at least as old as Jeremiah himself.  They work powerfully because, most often, they confirm what want to or already believe.

This article offers some practical tips for Christians seeking to disengage from disinformation.  Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways we can embody Jeremiah’s command to the Judeans in Babylonian exile today, as Christians in a social media-saturated landscape, is to learn, teach and embody media literacy toward the flourishing of truth.  As the author of this article writes, “As seekers after truth, Christians should be looking for evidence and robust investigations rather than fabricated ideas that intrigue us.”