Jeremiah 28:12

In the chapter before, the LORD told Jeremiah to wear a wooden yoke on his neck as a sign that Judah and the nations around it would serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon (Jeremiah 27:2–7). A yoke was the wooden bar laid on the necks of oxen to harness them for work, and in a farming people everyone knew it as a picture of labour, servitude and submission to a master. Prophets often gave God’s message in a visible act like this, and Jeremiah carried his message about Babylon on his own shoulders.

These events took place in Jerusalem around 594–593 BC, in the reign of Zedekiah. A few years earlier, in 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had besieged Jerusalem (2 Kings 24:10) and carried King Jehoiachin and many leading citizens away to Babylon. Zedekiah ruled as a king paying tribute to Babylon, caught between that empire and the pull of Egypt. The people longed for freedom, so a prophet who promised it soon was welcome, and Jeremiah’s call to submit to Babylon sounded unpatriotic, even treasonous.

Hananiah, a prophet from Gibeon (Jeremiah 28:1), stood in the house of the LORD and announced that within two years God would break the yoke of the king of Babylon and bring back the vessels of the temple and the exiles (Jeremiah 28:2–4). Jeremiah answered him before the priests and the people (Jeremiah 28:5), wishing the words were true and recalling that the true prophets before them had spoken of war and disaster. Then Hananiah took the yoke from Jeremiah’s neck, broke it, and said that God would break Nebuchadnezzar’s yoke from the neck of all nations in the same way. Jeremiah went his way (Jeremiah 28:10–11). Our three verses are the LORD’s answer, and the rest of Jeremiah 28 follows it through to Hananiah’s death.

Jeremiah left the temple with no reply of his own, and the reply came from God. Verse 12 ties the moment to Hananiah’s act: the word came “after that Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah”. The verse gives no length of time between the two. What it makes plain is that God took up the challenge himself.

The Hebrew word for “word”, dâbâr, means word or speech, and in a separate sense a matter or thing. “The word of the LORD came” is the solemn phrase the prophets use for a message God gave them, so what Jeremiah is about to say is God’s own answer to Hananiah and carries God’s authority. “The LORD” stands for Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the God of Israel, the eternal God who made himself known to his people. Hananiah had claimed that name for his promise, and now the LORD speaks for himself.

The word “prophet” stands three times in verse 12, once for Hananiah and twice for Jeremiah. Both men held the same office and both spoke in the LORD’s name, and the crowd in the temple heard two prophets saying opposite things. The title alone could settle nothing. God’s word settles it.

The verb for “broken”, shâbar, means to break or shatter, and it describes what Hananiah did to the yoke with his hands. He meant the gesture to break the decree the yoke stood for. All he could break was the wood. The decree it pictured was God’s, and it was still in force when the pieces lay on the ground.

The verse ends with “saying,”, which opens the message that runs through the following verses.

God sends Jeremiah back: “Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD”. The message is for Hananiah himself, carried to him by the man whose yoke he had broken, and “Thus saith the LORD” marks it as God’s speech in Jeremiah’s mouth.

The word for “yokes”, môwṭâh, is in Strong’s a pole, and by implication the bow of an ox yoke, and so a yoke, whether literal or figurative. “Yokes” stands twice in verse 13, first of wood and then of iron. The word for iron, barzel, simply means iron. Strong’s derives it, with a “perhaps”, from a root that may mean to pierce, and glosses it “as cutting”, while Klein’s lexicon treats it as a word borrowed from Hittite. Iron is far stronger than wood, so the change of material tells everyone listening that the servitude will be harder and that it will hold.

Here is the bitter irony of Hananiah’s act. He set out to lift the burden from the people, and he made it heavier. God says “thou shalt make for them yokes of iron”, laying the iron yokes at Hananiah’s door. His false word, and the people’s readiness to believe it, led them toward resisting the rule God had appointed, and the result of that resistance would be a harder bondage than the one God first laid on them. The wooden yoke had come with a promise of preservation for those who would bow under it. The iron yoke is the same judgment with the way of escape closed.

Iron as a picture of hard bondage was familiar to Israel. Moses had warned that if the people turned from the LORD, an enemy would put a yoke of iron on their neck (Deuteronomy 28:48). When Israel came to Rehoboam, they asked him to lighten the heavy yoke laid on them (1 Kings 12:4). Scripture also speaks of a yoke rightly borne, and Lamentations says it is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth (Lamentations 3:27).

Verse 14 begins with “For”, and gives the reason the iron yoke will hold: God himself put it there. He speaks as “the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel”. The first title names him as the commander of all the armies of heaven and earth, and the second names his covenant bond with his people, which still holds even as he uses a foreign king to discipline them.

“I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations.” Hananiah had said that God would break the yoke from the neck of all nations, and God answers with the same picture turned the other way. The word for nations, gôwy, means a people, and is used especially of foreign peoples, the Gentiles, as distinct from Israel. Strong’s notes that it can also be used figuratively of a troop of animals. “All these nations” are Judah’s neighbours, the peoples to whom Hananiah had promised freedom, so God’s judgment reaches well beyond his covenant people.

The verb “serve” stands twice in verse 14: “that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him”. The Hebrew verb, ʻâbad, means to work, labour, serve, till or worship, and here it is the service a subject people owes a conquering king. The second “they shall serve him” makes the first certain.

“And I have given him the beasts of the field also.” The grant reaches past the peoples to the land and its creatures, which is a way of saying that Nebuchadnezzar’s rule over the region is complete. He holds it as a gift, though. “I have given him” means the earth was the LORD’s to give, as the psalm says: “The earth is the LORD’s” (Psalm 24:1). God removes kings and sets up kings (Daniel 2:21), and the king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD (Proverbs 21:1).

Hananiah’s message was popular and comforting, and Jeremiah’s was hard. God had already given Israel the test. A prophet who speaks in God’s name a word God has not commanded shall die, and when a prophet’s word does not come to pass, the LORD has not spoken it (Deuteronomy 18:20–22). Jeremiah had warned against prophets who “speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:16), and Ezekiel was sent to prophesy against the prophets who follow their own spirit (Ezekiel 13:1–9).

The test was applied quickly. Right after our verses Jeremiah told Hananiah that the LORD had not sent him and that he would die that very year, because he had made the people trust in a lie and led them into rebellion against the LORD. Hananiah died in the seventh month of that year (Jeremiah 28:15–17). His two years came and went, and the yoke of Babylon held. Jeremiah’s word stood because it was God’s, and God’s word accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11).

The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah came to us in full in Jesus Christ. John calls him the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1), and says that the Word was made flesh (John 1:14). Hananiah’s words failed within the year, while the words Jesus speaks are spirit and life (John 6:63). Peter confessed that he has the words of eternal life (John 6:68), and Jesus called himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

These verses show what happens when people try to throw off a burden God has laid on them by their own hands. Sin lays a heavier yoke on all of us, and the law makes that weight known, as Paul says it made him know his sin (Romans 7:7). Christ removed it by the sacrifice of himself, appearing once at the end of the ages to put away sin (Hebrews 9:26), and Paul calls the result the liberty with which Christ has made us free (Galatians 5:1).

Then Jesus offers a yoke of his own to all who labour and are heavy laden: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). It comes with rest for the soul, from one who is meek and lowly in heart. The God who gave Nebuchadnezzar the nations for a season has given all power in heaven and in earth to his Son (Matthew 28:18), and every knee will bow to him (Philippians 2:9–11). His rule is the one that lasts, and his yoke is the one that gives rest.