---
title: "Clarke"
description: "Verse Jeremiah 29:1. Now these are the words of the letter — This transaction took place in the first or second year of Zedekiah. It appears that the prop"
image: "/images/missing.jpg"
url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/commentaries/clarkes-commentary/jeremiah/29"
---

Verse [Jeremiah 29:1](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/1). ***Now these are the words of the letter*** — This transaction took place in the *first* or *second* year of Zedekiah. It appears that the prophet had been informed that the Jews who had already been carried into captivity had, through the instigations of false prophets, been led to believe that they were to be brought out of their captivity speedily. Jeremiah, fearing that this delusion might induce them to take some hasty steps, ill comporting with their present state, wrote a letter to them, which he entrusted to an embassy which Zedekiah had sent on some political concerns to Nebuchadnezzar. The letter was directed to the elders, priests, prophets, and people who had been carried away captives to Babylon.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:4](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/4). ***Thus saith the Lord of hosts*** — This was the commencement of the letter.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:5](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/5). ***Build ye houses*** — Prepare for a long continuance in your present captivity. Provide yourselves with the *necessaries* of life, and multiply in the land, that ye may become a powerful people.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:7](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/7). ***Seek the peace of the city*** — Endeavour to promote, as far as you can, the *prosperity* of the places in which ye sojourn. Let no disaffection appear in word or act. Nothing can be more reasonable than this. Wherever a man lives and has his nourishment and support, that is his country as long as he resides in it. If things go well with that country, his interest is promoted by the general prosperity, he lives at comparative ease, and has the necessaries of life cheaper; and unless he is in a state of cruel servitude, which does not appear to have been the case with those Israelites to whom the prophet writes, (those of the first captivity,) they must be nearly, if not altogether, in as good a state as if they had been in the country that gave them birth. And in this case they were much better off than their brethren now in Judea, who had to contend with *famine* and *war*, and scarcely any thing before them but God's curse and extermination.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:8](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/8). ***Neither hearken to your dreams*** — Rather, *dreamers*; for it appears there was a class of such persons, who not only had acquired a facility of dreaming themselves, but who undertook to interpret the dreams of others.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:10](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/10). ***For thus saith the Lord*** — It has been supposed that a very serious *transposition* of verses has taken place here; and it has been proposed to read after [Jeremiah 29:9](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/9) the *sixteenth* to the *nineteenth* inclusive; then the *tenth*, and on to the *fourteenth* inclusive; then the *twentieth*, the *fifteenth*, the *twenty-first*, and the rest regularly to the end.
***That after seventy years be accomplished*** — לפי מלאת *lephi meloth*, "at the mouth of the accomplishment," or "fill to the mouth." Seventy years is the *measure* which must be *filled; - fill this to* *the brim*; - complete this measure, and then you shall be visited and released. The whole *seventy* must be completed; expect no enlargement before that time.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:11](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/11). ***Thoughts of peace*** — Here God gives them to understand,
1. That his love was moved towards them.
2. That he would perform his good word, his promises often repeated, to them.
3. That for the fulfilment of these they must *pray, seek*, and *search*.
4. That he would *hearken*, and they should find him; provided,
5. They *sought* him with their *whole heart*, [Jeremiah 29:10-13](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/10-13).

Verse [Jeremiah 29:14](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/14). ***I will gather you from all the nations*** — A quotation from [Deuteronomy 30:3](../../../kjv/deuteronomy/30/3), and see also [Deuteronomy 4:7](../../../kjv/deuteronomy/4/7).

Verse [Jeremiah 29:15](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/15). ***Because ye have said*** — The *Septuagint* very properly insert this verse between the *twentieth* and the *twenty-first*, and thus the *connexion* here is not disturbed, and the connexion below completed.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:17](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/17). ***Behold, I will send upon them the sword*** — Do not envy the state of *Zedekiah* who sits on the throne of David, nor that of the *people* who are now in the land whence ye have been carried captive, ([Jeremiah 29:16](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/16),) for "I will send the sword, the pestilence, and the famine upon them;" and afterwards shall cause them to be carried into a miserable captivity *in all nations*, ([Jeremiah 29:18](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/18);) but *ye* see the worst of *your own* case, and you have God's promise of enlargement when the proper time is come. The reader will not forget that the prophet is addressing the captives in Babylon.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:20](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/20). ***Hear ye therefore the word*** — Dr. *Blayney* thinks there were *two letters* written by the prophet to the captives in Babylon, and that the *first* ends with this verse. That having heard, on the return of the embassy (Elasah and Gemariah, whom Zedekiah had sent to Babylon, and to whom the prophet entrusted the above letter, [Jeremiah 29:3](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/3),) that the captives had not received his advises favourably, because they were deceived by false prophets among them, who promised them a *speedier* deliverance, he therefore wrote a *second letter*, beginning with the *fifteenth* verse, and going on with the *twenty-first*, &c., in which he denounces God's judgments on three of the chief of those, Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:21](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/21). ***He shall slay them before your eyes.*** — Nebuchadnezzar would be led by political reasons to punish these pretended prophets, as their predictions tended to make his Israelitish subjects uneasy and disaffected, and might excite them to rebellion. He therefore slew them; two of them, it appears, he *burnt alive*, viz., *Ahab* and *Zedekiah*, who are supposed by the rabbins to be the *two elders* who endeavoured to seduce *Susanna*, see [Jeremiah 29:23](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/23). Burning *alive* was a Chaldean punishment, [Daniel 3:6](../../../kjv/daniel/3/6), and [Amos 2:1](../../../kjv/amos/2/1). From them other nations borrowed it.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:23](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/23). ***Have committed adultery with their neighbours' wives*** — This is supposed to refer to the case of Susanna. See above.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:24](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/24). ***Speak to Shemaiah*** — Zephaniah was the *second priest,* *sagan*, or chief priest's deputy, and Seraiah, high priest, when Jerusalem was taken. See [Jeremiah 52:24](../../../kjv/jeremiah/52/24). Shemaiah directs his letter to the former, and tells him that God had appointed him to supply the place of the high priest, who was probably then absent. His name was either *Azariah* or *Seraiah* his son, but called *Jehoiada* from the remarkable zeal and courage of that pontiff. See the passages in the margin. - *Dodd*. After the taking of Jerusalem, Zephaniah was put to death by Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah, see [Jeremiah 37:3](../../../kjv/jeremiah/37/3). The history of Jehoiada may be seen [2 Kings 11:3](../../../kjv/2-kings/11/3), &c.

Verse [Jeremiah 29:26](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/26). ***For every man*****that is*****mad, and maketh himself a**********prophet*** — *Mad*, משגע meshugga, in ecstatic rapture; such as appeared in the prophets, whether *true* or *false*, when under the influence, the one of God, the other of a demon. See [2 Kings 9:11](../../../kjv/2-kings/9/11); [Hosea 9:7](../../../kjv/hosea/9/7).

Verse [Jeremiah 29:32](../../../kjv/jeremiah/29/32). ***I will punish Shemaiah*** —
1. He shall have no posterity to succeed him.
2. His family, i.e., *relations*, c., shall not be found among those whom I shall bring back from captivity.
3. Nor shall *he* himself see the good that I shall do for my people.
And all this shall come upon him and his because he hath taught rebellion against the Lord. He excited the people to reject Jeremiah, and to receive the lying words of the *false prophets* and these led them to rebel.

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