Jeremiah 29:4

These verses open the letter Jeremiah sent to the exiles (Jeremiah 29:1–23). They had been carried off in the first great deportation, in 597 BC, when Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and took King Jehoiachin, the royal family, the nobles, the skilled craftsmen and many of the strongest men to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10–16). For years Jeremiah had warned that judgment was coming because of Judah’s idolatry and covenant unfaithfulness, in the prophecy of seventy years of captivity (Jeremiah 25) and elsewhere, and the vision of the good and bad figs belongs to the time of this first deportation (Jeremiah 24).

For the exiles the loss was deep. They were far from their land and from the temple, living in a great and idolatrous empire, and in their world exile was taken as a sign that a people’s god had been beaten or had abandoned them. They were left asking about God’s power and faithfulness and about who they now were as his people. Into that grief came prophets with comforting words. In Jerusalem Hananiah announced that God would bring the captives home within two years (Jeremiah 28:1–4), and Jeremiah stood against him (Jeremiah 28). Prophets among the exiles themselves were saying the same, and the letter warns the people against them (Jeremiah 29:8–9). One of them, Shemaiah, is dealt with later in the chapter (Jeremiah 29:24–32).

The letter tells them the truth they least wanted to hear. The captivity would last seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10), and after that God would visit them and bring them home, for his thoughts toward them were “thoughts of peace” (Jeremiah 29:10–14). Verses 4 to 7 tell them how to live until then.

“Thus saith the LORD” is the prophet’s messenger formula, and it marks everything that follows as God’s own word. Two titles stand at the head of the letter. Yᵉhôvâh, rendered “the LORD”, is God’s covenant name, the name of the self-existent, eternal God who keeps his promises. “Of hosts” is tsâbâʼ, a word for an army or host, for war and for service, and for the host of heaven. The LORD of hosts commands the armies of heaven and earth and rules over the rise and fall of empires, Babylon among them. “The God of Israel” says that this mighty God is still Israel’s own God (Isaiah 43:15). Together the two titles tell captives who felt beaten and forsaken that the God who rules all nations is still their God and is still speaking to them.

He speaks to “all that are carried away captives”, the whole community of exiles. Then he says, “whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon.” The verb is gâlâh, whose root sense is to uncover or strip, and which came to mean to go or to send into exile, since captives were usually stripped. Elsewhere the same verb means to reveal. The related noun gôwlâh names the exiles as a body, the captivity. Here the verb is in its causative form, and God is its subject: “I have caused.” Babylon’s soldiers did the marching, and God says that he sent his people. He says it again in verse 7, in the middle of his command about the city.

The first commands are about houses and food: “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them.” To build is bânâh, a word used for building, making and repairing, and in one idiom for obtaining children, as a family is built up. To dwell is yâshab, which properly means to sit down, and so comes to mean to remain, to settle and to inhabit. To plant is nâṭaʻ, the ordinary word for planting.

Every one of these takes time. People build a house when they mean to live in it, and they plant a garden when they expect to be there for the harvest. These were practical instructions for food and shelter in a farming land, and they were meant to change the exiles’ whole outlook. God was telling them to stop living from day to day as people about to leave and to settle in for a long stay. Babylon was a powerful empire, with great cities, skilled farming and many gods, and settling there meant living as a distinct people within it, taking part in its ordinary life while keeping clear of its idols.

The law had named this very loss among its curses: “thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof” (Deuteronomy 28:30). Exile was that curse in force, and yet in exile God tells his people to build and dwell, to plant and eat. His mercy is at work in the middle of his judgment. Isaiah uses the same pictures for the new heavens and the new earth, where God’s people “shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them” (Isaiah 65:21–22), so the settled life God gives in Babylon is a small foretaste of what he means to give his people for ever. The work also rests on him: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127:1). The God who commanded the building would make it fruitful.

Verse 6 carries the same long view into family life. “Take ye wives” uses lâqach, a very common verb for taking in every sense, here for taking a wife, a deliberate step in founding a household. “Beget” is yâlad, to bear young or to beget, the word for bringing children into the world. Then the command reaches the next generation. The exiles are to take wives for their sons and give their daughters to husbands, “that they may bear sons and daughters.” Three generations stand in one verse, parents, children and grandchildren, all in Babylon. The verse already implies the seventy years: many who heard it would grow old there, and their grandchildren would be born there.

The purpose clause gives God’s reason: “that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.” The two verbs are set against each other. Râbâh means to increase, to become many or great, and mâʻaṭ means to become small or few. A captive people could easily dwindle, through despair or by being absorbed into the nations around them, and God wanted his people to grow. That fits his first words to mankind, “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), and his promise to make of Abraham a great nation (Genesis 12:2). Judah’s sin had brought judgment, and the promise to Abraham still stood. God was keeping his people alive and distinct, ready for the restoration he had planned for them (Jeremiah 29:11).

Verse 7 is the heart of the passage and its most surprising command: “And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” The city is Babylon, the capital of the empire that had conquered them, and God tells them to want its good and to work and pray for it.

To seek is dârash, which means to seek, to inquire of, to require or to care for. It describes a deliberate pursuit, and the exiles were to pursue the welfare of the city with real effort. The word for peace is shâlôwm, which names a state of completeness and soundness, of welfare, peace and safety. The peace of a city in this sense is its whole good: a city at peace is safe, sound and doing well. “Peace” comes three times in the verse, and the repetition binds the city’s welfare and the exiles’ welfare together.

The middle of the verse repeats what verse 4 said. This is the city “whither I have caused you to be carried away captives”, and the verb is gâlâh in its causative form again. God sent them to this city, so their duty to it comes from him. Then he adds, “and pray unto the LORD for it.” Their care for Babylon was to be part of their life with God, carried to him in prayer, because lasting peace comes from him. Last comes the reason: “for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” For as long as the exile lasted, their safety and well-being were bound up with the city’s, so seeking its good was obedience to God and wisdom for themselves at once.

The exile in Babylon points to a deeper exile, the separation of sinners from God, and God’s answer to it is Christ. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4–6). In him God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18–19), and he has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption (Colossians 1:13–14). The people God kept alive and growing in Babylon were the line through which the promised seed would come, and Paul says that seed is Christ (Galatians 3:16).

Jesus is himself our peace, who has broken down the wall of hostility between us (Ephesians 2:14). He sought the peace of a broken world through sacrificial love and humble service, and on the cross he prayed for the people who were crucifying him: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

The commands to build, plant and increase have their counterpart in the church. Jesus said, “upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), and Paul tells believers, “ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building” (1 Corinthians 3:9), built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ himself as the chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:20). They bear fruit by abiding in Christ the vine (John 15:4–5), for “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5), and the fruit the Spirit grows in them is love, joy, peace and the rest (Galatians 5:22–23). God’s people now increase by new birth, as the gospel goes out to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19), and the church grows into one body from every people.

The exiles’ stay in Babylon was long, and it had an end. Ours does too. Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), we look for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10), and we wait for the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21:1–4), where God will dwell with his people and wipe away all tears from their eyes (Revelation 21:3–4). Until then we are ambassadors for Christ in this world (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Peter calls believers “strangers and pilgrims” (1 Peter 2:11), and these verses show how strangers are meant to live. God places his people in particular towns and cities, and he is sovereign over the place where we are now, including its hard parts. He asks us to live there fully: to build and plant, to marry and raise children, to work, and to put down roots in the community he has given us, while our hope rests on his promise and his timing. The exiles were told to give themselves to a place they would one day leave, and the same calling is ours.

We are also called to seek the peace of our own cities. That means working for the good of our neighbours beyond the church, doing our part in civic life, upholding justice, and praying for the people who govern us, even where we disagree with the ways of the culture around us. Our own quiet, and our freedom to live out our faith, are often bound up with the peace of the society around us. God’s people who live this way are a blessing to the place he has sent them, as the exiles were called to be in Babylon.