Jeremiah 27:1

CHAPTER XXVII

Ambassadors being come from several neighbouring nations to

solicit the king of Judah to join in a confederacy against the

king of Babylon, Jeremiah is commanded to put bands and yokes

upon his neck, (the emblems of subjection and slavery,) and to

send them afterwards by those ambassadors to their respective

princes; intimating by this significant type that God had

decreed their subjection to the Babylonian empire, and that it

was their wisdom to submit. It is farther declared that all the

conquered nations shall remain in subjection to the Chaldeans

during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and those of his son and

grandson, even till the arrival of that period in which the

Babylonians shall have filled up the measure of their

iniquities; and that then the mighty Chaldean monarchy itself,

for a certain period the paramount power of the habitable

globe, shall be voted with a dreadful storm of Divine wrath,

through the violence of which it shall be dashed to pieces like

a potter's vessel, the fragments falling into the hands of many

nations and great kings, 1-11.

Zedekiah, particularly, is admonished not to join to the revolt

against Nebuchadnezzar, and warned against trusting to the

suggestions of false prophets, 11-18.

The chapter concludes with foretelling that what still remained

of the sacred vessels of the temple should be carried to

Babylon, and not restored till after the destruction of the

Chaldean empire, 19-22.

NOTES ON CHAP. XXVII

Verse Jeremiah 27:1. In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim] It is most evident that his prophecy was delivered about the fourth year of ZEDEKIAH, and not Jehoiakim, as in the text. See Jeremiah 28:1. Three of Kennicott's MSS. (one in the text, a second in the margin, and the third upon a rasure) have Zedekiah; so likewise have the Syriac and the Arabic. Houbigant, Lowth, Blayney, Dahler, and others declare for this reading against that in the present text. And it is clear from the third and twelfth verses, where Zedekiah is expressly mentioned, that this is the true reading.