The Prophets in Babylon
15 Because you have said, “Yahweh has raised us up prophets in Babylon,” 16 Yahweh says concerning the king who sits on David’s throne, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your brothers who haven’t gone with you into captivity, 17 Yahweh of Armies says: “Behold, I will send on them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like rotten figs that can’t be eaten, they are so bad. 18 I will pursue after them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth, to be an object of horror, an astonishment, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, 19 because they have not listened to my words,” says Yahweh, “with which I sent to them my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but you would not hear,” says Yahweh. 20 Hear therefore Yahweh’s word, all you captives whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon. 21 Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah, and concerning Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who prophesy a lie to you in my name: “Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and he will kill them before your eyes. 22 A curse will be taken up about them by all the captives of Judah who are in Babylon, saying, ‘Yahweh make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire;’ 23 because they have done foolish things in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbors’ wives, and have spoken words in my name falsely, which I didn’t command them. I am he who knows, and am witness,” says Yahweh. 24 Concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite you shall speak, saying, 25 “Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘Because you have sent letters in your own name to all the people who are at Jerusalem, and to Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, and to all the priests, saying, 26 “Yahweh has made you priest in the place of Jehoiada the priest, that there may be officers in Yahweh’s house, for every man who is crazy and makes himself a prophet, that you should put him in the stocks and in shackles. 27 Now therefore, why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth, who makes himself a prophet to you, 28 because he has sent to us in Babylon, saying, The captivity is long. Build houses, and dwell in them. Plant gardens, and eat their fruit?”’” 29 Zephaniah the priest read this letter in the hearing of Jeremiah the prophet. 30 Then Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah, saying, 31 “Send to all of the captives, saying, ‘Yahweh says concerning Shemaiah the Nehelamite: “Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you, and I didn’t send him, and he has caused you to trust in a lie,” 32 therefore Yahweh says, “Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his offspring. He will not have a man to dwell among this people. He won’t see the good that I will do to my people,” says Yahweh, “because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh.”’”
The lie followed the exiles into Babylon, and one of its preachers writes home asking why nobody has locked Jeremiah up yet.
The exiles had said, in effect, that they had their own prophets now — Yahweh has raised us up prophets in Babylon — and the reply first deals with what those prophets were telling them about home. The people still in Jerusalem, whom the deportees envied, are the rotten figs of the earlier vision, and the sword, famine and pestilence are named as pursuing them. The comfortable message in Babylon depended on the belief that the real story was continuing back in the city, and the letter closes that off.
Two of these men are named and sentenced, and the charges against them are joined in one sentence: they have prophesied falsely in God's name, and they have committed adultery with their neighbors' wives. The book keeps making that connection rather than treating false teaching as an intellectual failure. And the closing clause is a statement about evidence — I am he who knows, and am witness — addressed to men whose conduct was private and whose message was public.
The third case is the most revealing, because it is a piece of correspondence. Shemaiah writes from Babylon to the priest in charge of order in the temple, reminding him that his office exists to put every man who is crazy and makes himself a prophet in the stocks, and asking why Jeremiah has not been dealt with. He quotes the offending sentence accurately: the captivity is long, build houses and plant gardens. That is what he found intolerable — not a doctrine but a horticultural instruction, because a planted garden concedes the seventy years.
Then a detail that is easy to pass over and worth stopping at. Zephaniah the priest read this letter in the hearing of Jeremiah the prophet. The officer who was being urged to arrest him simply showed him the complaint. The book does not explain the man or praise him, and he appears later still functioning in the same post Jeremiah 37:3. The sentence on Shemaiah follows — no descendant among the people, and he won't see the good that I will do to my people — which is a punishment defined by exclusion from a restoration he had refused to believe in.
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