Jeremiah 34
Prophecy Concerning King Zedekiah 1–7
The Broken Covenant of Freedom 8–11
Judgment for Violating the Law 12–22
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Jeremiah 34
Verse 1
all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion — The besieging army was drawn from the peoples under Babylon’s rule, as the LORD had told Jeremiah at his call: ‘I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north’ (Jer 1:15). The siege began ‘in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month’ of Zedekiah (2 Ki 25:1), and this word comes while it is under way.
Verse 3
mouth to mouth — The meeting is the one told in 2 Ki 25:6–7: Zedekiah was brought to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where ‘they gave judgment upon him’, and his sons were slain before his eyes before his own eyes were put out. The same words stand in Jer 32:4; Ezek 12:13 adds that he would come ‘to Babylon… yet shall he not see it’.
Verse 5
die in peace — The promise is peace (shalom) in the manner of death: Zedekiah would not ‘die by the sword’ (v.4). The ‘burnings’ (misraphah) are the spices burned at a king’s burial, like the ‘very great burning’ made for Asa (2 Chr 16:14) and withheld from Jehoram (2 Chr 21:19). The lament ‘Ah lord!’ was denied Jehoiakim (Jer 22:18).
Verse 7
Lachish, and against Azekah — These two ‘defenced cities’ (mibtsar, fortified towns) were the last still holding in Judah. Both are named earlier in Scripture: Azekah where hailstones fell on Joshua’s enemies (Josh 10:11), and Lachish where Hezekiah ‘sent to the king of Assyria’ (2 Ki 18:14).
Verse 8
to proclaim liberty — Deror is the word of the jubile law, ‘proclaim liberty throughout all the land’ (Lev 25:10), and of Isa 61:1, ‘to proclaim liberty to the captives’. Zedekiah’s covenant with the people in Jerusalem was a release of servants, sworn ‘in the house which is called by my name’ (v.15).
Verse 9
an Hebrew or an Hebrewess — The release follows the law that a Hebrew sold to a brother serves ‘six years’ and goes out free in the seventh (Ex 21:2; Deut 15:12). ‘Free’ is chophshi, the word of those laws and of Isa 58:6, ‘let the oppressed go free’. The ground of the release is kinship: ‘a Jew his brother’.
Verse 11
they turned, and caused the servants… to return — ‘Turned’ and ‘return’ are one Hebrew verb, shuv. It is the verb of v.15, where they ‘turned’ and did right, and of v.16, where they turned back from it. The Chaldeans had ‘gone up’ from the city (v.21; Jer 37:5), and the freed servants were brought back ‘into subjection’.
Verse 14
At the end of seven years — The command is that of Deut 15:12, ‘in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free’, and it belonged to the covenant made ‘in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt’ (v.13). ‘Inclined their ear’ is the idiom of Jer 7:24, where the fathers ‘hearkened not, nor inclined their ear’.
Verse 16
polluted my name — Chalal, to profane, the verb of Lev 19:12, ‘neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God’. The release had been sworn ‘in the house which is called by my name’ (v.15), so undoing it profaned the name they swore by. ‘At their pleasure’ is literally ‘to their soul’ (nephesh), wherever the servants chose to go.
Verse 17
I proclaim a liberty for you — The LORD answers in their own word deror: since they would not proclaim liberty to their brothers, he proclaims a ‘liberty’ to the sword, the pestilence and the famine. ‘Removed’ (zaavah, agitation, ill-treatment) is the word of Deut 28:25, ‘shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth’, and of Jer 15:4; 24:9; 29:18.
Verse 18
cut the calf in twain — The covenant was made by cutting an animal, and the parties passed between the ‘parts’ (bether). The same word names the ‘piece’ of Abram’s sacrifice (Gen 15:10); it occurs only there and in vv.18–19. The men who broke this covenant are given up, and their ‘dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven’ (v.20).
Verse 19
the eunuchs, and the priests — Five groups are named: the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs (saris, court officers), the priests, and ‘all the people of the land’. They match those who ‘entered into the covenant’ in v.10, ‘all the princes, and all the people’, and v.21 gives Zedekiah and his princes into Babylon’s hand.
Verse 22
I will command… and cause them to return — The Chaldeans who had ‘gone up’ (v.21) are brought back: ‘the Chaldeans shall come again, and fight against this city, and take it, and burn it with fire’ (Jer 37:8). It was fulfilled when the city was taken and ‘the Chaldeans burned the king’s house’ (Jer 39:1–2, 8).