The Letter to the Exiles
1 Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the residue of the elders of the captivity, and to the priests, to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon, 2 (after Jeconiah the king, the queen mother, the eunuchs, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem), 3 by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, (whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon). It said: 4 Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and father sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, and don’t be diminished. 7 Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” 8 For Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “Don’t let your prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you. Don’t listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. 9 For they prophesy falsely to you in my name. I have not sent them,” says Yahweh. 10 For Yahweh says, “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says Yahweh, “thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. 12 You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” says Yahweh, “and I will turn again your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places where I have driven you,” says Yahweh. “I will bring you again to the place from where I caused you to be carried away captive.”
The exiles are told to build, marry and pray for the city that deported them, and the promise of a future is given to people who will mostly die abroad.
The letter goes out with a royal delegation, which is how a private message travels to another empire, and it is addressed to elders, priests, prophets and all the people already in Babylon. Its first instructions are astonishing for their ordinariness. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat the fruit. Marry, have children, arrange marriages for those children, multiply and do not dwindle. Every verb assumes a long stay. A community expecting to go home in two years does not plant an orchard, and the letter quietly demolishes Hananiah's timetable by telling people what to do with their spring.
Then the hardest sentence in it: Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its peace you will have peace. They are to pray for Babylon — for the prosperity of the power that burned their towns and took their relatives. The reason given is not sentimental but practical. Their own welfare is now bound up with its welfare. Nothing here excuses the empire, and the same book has already sentenced it. What is refused is the idea that a wronged people may withdraw into hostility while they wait.
The seventy years are repeated, and the phrase that follows them is the one everybody quotes: I know the thoughts that I think toward you... thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future. It has to be read where it stands. It is said to a deported community that has just been told the term is seventy years. Most of the people first reading it would die in Babylon, and the future promised is their grandchildren's. That does not make it less of a comfort. It makes it a different kind. The God speaking has a plan longer than any of the lives it is spoken to, and says so to their faces.
And the letter ends by relocating where God can be found. You shall seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. That is written to people a thousand miles from the temple, in a land whose gods had their own addresses. It makes the search rather than the site the condition. What is required is the whole heart, and nothing else at all. A community with no altar, no city and no king is told it has lost nothing that was ever needed for this.
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