The Two Baskets of Figs
1 Yahweh showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs were set before Yahweh’s temple, after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. 2 One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first-ripe; and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. 3 Then Yahweh asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs. The good figs are very good, and the bad are very bad, so bad that they can’t be eaten.” 4 Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, 5 “Yahweh, the God of Israel says: ‘Like these good figs, so I will regard the captives of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans, as good. 6 For I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them again to this land. I will build them, and not pull them down. I will plant them, and not pluck them up. 7 I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh. They will be my people, and I will be their God; for they will return to me with their whole heart. 8 “‘As the bad figs, which can’t be eaten, they are so bad,’ surely Yahweh says, ‘So I will give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. 9 I will even give them up to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I will drive them. 10 I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, until they are consumed from off the land that I gave to them and to their fathers.’”
The exiles already carried off are the good fruit and those still living in Jerusalem are the rotten, which reverses everything the survivors assumed about themselves.
The vision is dated after the first great deportation, when Jeconiah, the princes, the craftsmen and the smiths had been taken to Babylon. That detail sets up the whole reversal. Everyone left in Jerusalem could look at the empty houses and draw the obvious conclusion. Those who went were under judgment; those who remained were spared. The two baskets are set in front of the temple, one of first-ripe figs and one of fruit too rotten to eat, and the assignment is the opposite of the obvious one.
The exiles are the good figs, and the language used of them is deliberately warm: I will set my eyes on them for good. The six verbs of the call return, with the constructive pair kept and the destructive pair explicitly denied — build and not pull down, plant and not pluck up Jeremiah 1:10. Everything the nation had been told was coming is here promised in reverse to the people who had already lost everything.
The reason they are good is worth reading slowly, because it is not a reason found in them. They are regarded as good, and then they are given something: I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahweh. The knowing comes after the regarding, and the heart is issued rather than developed. This is the same remedy the new covenant will describe Jeremiah 31:33, stated here in its shortest form. Its order rules out the reading that the deportees were selected because they were the better sort. The whole-hearted return in the next clause is the result of the gift, not its price.
The bad basket holds Zedekiah, his princes, the remnant left in Jerusalem, and those who had gone down to Egypt — which covers every person who had avoided the deportation by staying or by fleeing. What they are given is dispersal with no promise attached: tossed among the kingdoms, a reproach and a proverb, pursued by sword, famine and pestilence. The arrangement makes a point the book keeps making about where safety is. The people in the temple's own city are the rotten fruit. The people in Babylon are being watched over for good. Location has stopped meaning anything at all.
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