360 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTSthat he will send sword, famine, and pestilence against them, and they will be
like horrid figs that cannot be eaten. Yahweh's relentless pursuit of this un-
blessed remnant will be such that they will become a curse among all the king-
doms of the earth. The situation at home is little changed. People have not
listened to Yahweh's words sent continually by prophets who are real prophets.
The exiles in Babylon are told they were no better.
Jeremiah now tells his exilic audience to hear an oracle from Yahweh. It has
to do with two would-be prophets in Babylon, Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zede-
kiah son of Maaseiah, both of whom are prophesying lies in Yahweh's name.
Yahweh says he will give them into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, who will fin-
ish them off shamefully in the sight of all. As a result, the exiles (not the nations
round about) will have this curse on their lips: "Yahweh make you like Zede-
kiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire." Yahweh gives
his reason for this exemplary act: Ahab and Zedekiah have created a scandal by
committing adultery with wives of their friends; they have also been preaching
lies in Yahweh's name. Yahweh says he knows it all and is a witness to it all!
The introduction states that this letter was sent to Babylon after the exile of
597 B.C. I tend to agree with Calvin who thinks it went soon after the exile.
Calvin also thinks it was when Zedekiah's kingship was not yet firmly estab-
lished. It should then be dated roughly the same time as chap. 24, its balancing
narrative in the Zedekiah Cluster. Others (Peake; Weiser; Bright) date it later,
ca. 594-593 B.C., which correlates it with the preaching in chaps. 27-28 and
the unrest in Jerusalem and Babylon.
The audience hearing the Zedekiah Cluster will perceive in v 17 continuity
with the bad figs spoken of in chap. 24. And having also just heard chap. 28, it
will compare the false prophet Hananiah in Jerusalem with the false prophets
Ahab and Zedekiah in Babylon; and once the whole of chap. 29 is heard, it
will link those with the false prophet Shemaiah in Babylon as well. Looking
ahead, we see that hopeful indications here ("a future and a hope," "a good
word") anticipate the hope contained in the Book of Restoration following
(chaps. 30-33).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ( 197 l: 299), in his 1944 baptismal letter to the son of
Eberhard and Renate Bethge, quoted v 7 of the present letter about seeking the
welfare of the city and praying to the Lord on its behalf. He was looking ahead
to community life after the war and sufferings that were now being brought
upon his people. When the war was over, churches in Germany-most coura-
geously, churches under Communism in the DDR-did precisely this during
the foreign occupation of their country.
More recently, I was much surprised to learn from Arab Christians in a
group I addressed at the Sabeel Ecumenical Center, Jerusalem, in December
2001, that the Palestinian Arabs who were forcibly evicted or who fled from
their homes during the 1948 War and were now (with their children and
grandchildren) refugees in neighboring Arab countries did not think of them-
selves, nor did other Arabs think of them, as the "remnant" with a promised fu-
ture. The "remnant" of importance consisted of those still in the land-once