Context No. 8 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Jeremiah 34:17-22: in context

17Therefore the LORD says: “You have not listened to me, to proclaim liberty, every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim to you a liberty,” says the LORD, “to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine. I will make you be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. 18I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts: 19the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land, who passed between the parts of the calf. 20I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth. 21“I will give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes into the hands of their enemies, into the hands of those who seek their life and into the hands of the king of Babylon’s army, who has gone away from you. 22Behold, I will command,” says the LORD, “and cause them to return to this city. They will fight against it, take it, and burn it with fire. I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

The book of Jeremiah is set in the last years of Jerusalem, as the army of Babylon closes in during the early 500s BC. King Zedekiah holds a shrinking throne, the city is under siege, and the prophet keeps telling him the outcome he does not want to hear. Earlier in this chapter the king led the people in a covenant to free their Hebrew slaves, as the law required, since no Hebrew was to be held in service more than six years (34:8-11). They freed them. Then they took them back.

This passage is God's answer, and it turns on the word liberty. You would not proclaim liberty to your slaves, so I proclaim a liberty to you, to the sword, the plague, and the famine (34:17). The broken covenant had been sealed the old way. The people cut a calf in two and walked between the halves (34:18), the same rite Abraham witnessed in Genesis 15, where to pass between the pieces was to say, let this be done to me if I break my word. They walked that path and broke the word anyway.

The timing is the sharpest part. They freed the slaves while Babylon's army stood at the wall, and re-enslaved them when an Egyptian force approached and the siege briefly lifted (Jeremiah 37:5). The promise lasted exactly as long as the fear did. When did I last do the right thing only while the pressure was on, and undo it the moment it eased?

Sources

Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12: the law that a Hebrew slave goes free in the seventh year, the covenant Zedekiah revived
Genesis 15:9-17: the covenant sealed by passing between a divided animal, the rite named here
Jeremiah 37:5-11: the Egyptian army's approach that lifted the siege, the moment the promise was reversed