Jeremiah 28:5-9

2. The response of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 28:5-9)

TRANSLATION

(5) Then Jeremiah the prophet said unto Hananiah the prophet in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD, (6) and Jeremiah the prophet said, Amen! Thus may the LORD do! May the Lord establish your words which you have prophesied, to return the vessels of the house of the LORD and all the captives from Babylon unto this place. (7) But hear please this word which I am about to speak in your presence and in the presence of all the people. (8) The prophets who were before me and before you from ancient times prophesied against many lands and great kingdoms of war and famine and pestilence. (9) The prophet who prophesies of peace can be recognized as a prophet truly sent of the LORD only when the word of that prophet comes to pass.

COMMENTS

It is not hard to imagine the reaction of the crowd to the forthright and positive predictions of Hananiah. Thunderous applause and joyous shouts of agreement clearly indicated where the sentiments of the crowd lay. But eventually the audience hushed. Everyone strained forward to hear what Jeremiah would say in response to this direct attack from a fellow prophet. Jeremiah rises to the occasion. Like an iron pillar he courageously and calmly gave reply to his antagonist.
Jeremiah's initial response must have shocked the audience and temporarily disarmed his opponent. Amen, he said. May the LORD establish your words. May your prophecy be fulfilled. These words are not sarcastically spoken. Jeremiah truly desired in his own heart that the captivity would speedily come to an end. He dearly loved his people. He had prayed on behalf of his nation on more than one occasion. Nothing would please him more than to hear that Babylon had fallen and the exiles were coming home. But while in his heart he wishes Hananiah was right, in his mind he knows that Hananiah is dreaming the impossible dream.

Jeremiah's personal response is followed by his official response (Jeremiah 28:7-9)He calls upon his opponent to hear the true word of the Lord. He alludes first to the precedent of past prophecy. True prophets of God in the past prophesied against many countries and against great kingdoms of war and of evil and pestilence. In other words the tenor of preceding prophecies has been judgmental. Now of course Jeremiah did not mean that the pre-exilic prophets were completely negativethat they had no positive word of hope. It is a misuse of this verse to argue from it, as some of the older liberal scholars did, that all notes of hope found in the pre-exilic prophets must be later interpolations from after the time of Jeremiah. The earlier prophets did foresee a Messianic age; but the people to whom they spoke were unfit to enter into that golden age without first experiencing a terrible judgment. The point that Jeremiah is making is that his own condemnatory-type prophecy is part of the main stream of Israelite prophecy. Jeremiah implies that Hananiah's unconditional peace prophecy has probabilities strongly against it. It is interesting that Jeremiah speaks of many countries and great kingdoms. He obviously felt that the horizons of Israelite prophecy were not limited to Israel and Judah. In the preserved writings of all the prophets who preceded Jeremiah (except Hosea) oracles against foreign nations stand side by side with oracles against Israel and Judah. The present verse gives early and authoritative testimony to the genuineness of these so-called foreign nation oracles which have often been questioned by modern liberal scholars.

After establishing a presumptive case against the prediction of Hananiah in Jeremiah 28:8, Jeremiah proceeds in Jeremiah 28:9 to indicate the criteria by which such a prophecy can be judged true or false. If contrary to the analogy of previous prophecy a prophet speaks unconditionally of peace, then that prophecy can only be authenticated by the actual fulfillment. In effect Jeremiah is suggesting that everybody simply wait and see if Hananiah's prediction will be fulfilled. The word peace is not used here in the sense of salvation but of national peace and in particular deliverance from exile. God had made very clear in the law of Moses that return from exile was conditional. Only after return to the LORD and heart-felt obedience to His word would God bring His people home (Deuteronomy 30:1-5).