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Context No. 729 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 21:8-14: in context

8“You shall say to this people, ‘The LORD says: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. 9He who remains in this city will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, but he who goes out and passes over to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he will live, and he will escape with his life. 10For I have set my face on this city for evil, and not for good,” says the LORD. “It will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire.”’ 11“Concerning the house of the king of Judah, hear the LORD’s word: 12House of David, the LORD says, ‘Execute justice in the morning, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my wrath go out like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings. 13Behold, I am against you, O inhabitant of the valley, and of the rock of the plain,’ says the LORD. ‘You that say, “Who would come down against us?” or, “Who would enter into our homes?” 14I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings,’ says the LORD; ‘and I will kindle a fire in her forest, and it will devour all that is around her.’”

The Babylonian army is around Jerusalem, and King Zedekiah has sent to Jeremiah hoping for a word of rescue. What Jeremiah gives him is the opposite. Thus says the LORD, he begins: I set before you the way of life and the way of death. And then he defines them in a way no one in a besieged city wants to hear. Whoever stays in this city will die by sword and famine and plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians will live; he will keep his life as a prize of war. Life is on the far side of surrender. Death is in holding the walls.

It sounded like treason, and Jeremiah would be thrown into a pit for saying it. But it was the truth: the city was going to fall, and the only way through was to let it go. To the royal house he adds the real remedy while there is still time: execute justice every morning, rescue the robbed from the oppressor, or my wrath will burn and no one will put it out. And to a city sure of itself, saying who can come down against us, he says, I am against you. The king wanted a promise that he could keep everything by resisting. The word he got was that life lay in the very surrender he was bracing to refuse.

Jeremiah told a besieged people that life was in the surrender they were fighting, not the position they were holding. What doomed ground am I defending, when letting it go may be the only way to live?

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