NOTES for Jer 29:1-32

At first Jeremiah's letter may appear to be only one of his many speeches, which we have heard more than once already. But then we notice new motifs, and the address to the exiles itself differs radically from his earlier preaching. Although only a minority of the people has so far been deported to Babylon, while those remaining in the Promised Land still have yet to share the fate of the present exiles, it is precisely this captive minority that is already becoming the new core of the people.

It has not yet become that remnant called to preserve faithfulness to the people's spiritual vocation; the exiles' devotion to the Lord is still unstable, as shown, for example, by the presence of false prophets among them. But the shock experienced by the exiles has already prepared their hearts to reconsider the false ideas that had become habitual; it is now easier for them to hear the bitter wisdom proclaimed by the prophet.

Moreover, by their sufferings the involuntary settlers have already begun to atone for their sins, and perhaps for the sins of the whole people. And just as in the days of Abraham a people arose who were called to preserve faithfulness to the Lord, so now among a people that has shown unfaithfulness there must appear a "little flock" that could become a point of support for the return of all the rest to the original calling.

The Lord requires of the captive Judeans the same thing He required of everyone who could hear Him: to believe and to wait. The time of salvation will come only after several generations, but it will come. Not everyone will live to see that time, but the Lord has promised, and they must believe. This theme runs through all of Scripture, from the story of Abraham to the last days.

This is probably the most difficult commandment: to believe and to await the fulfillment of God’s promises. It is all too easy to despair, become disillusioned, and forget along the way. That is what happened to many who went into exile: few preserved their faith and hope. But they must be preserved, and one must wait, so that what was promised may be fulfilled: “You will find Me!”

Jeremiah writes a prophetic letter to the Israelites who had been deported to Babylon. The main meaning of this prophecy is that this Exile is part of God's plan for the people, that it will serve for good, and that it will be long. And yet it will come to an end, when seventy years have passed, when two or three generations have grown up. During this time the people will be transformed from a nation into a religious community. Those who do not remain faithful to the Lord will mix with the local population and dissolve into the Aramean population of the Near East. The Lord will remain with the exiles. He will instruct them through the prophets and lead them along the path of deepening faith.

The Babylonian exile is one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of Israel. We too must understand it so that we may learn to see in trials and catastrophes not only punishment for apostasy from God, but also a path to God, a path toward receiving new faith and new relationships with the Lord.

Today's reading contains a letter Jeremiah sent to the inhabitants of Jerusalem who had been deported to Babylon. This deportation took place in 589 BC, when Jerusalem was captured by Babylonian troops after a relatively short siege. The city had not yet been razed to the ground, as it would be two years later, and the Temple still stood in its place. Most of the aristocracy was deported, along with some of the Temple priests, merchants and craftsmen. They were all settled either in Babylon itself or in the nearby suburbs, in settlements whose inhabitants worked in Babylon. The local authorities did not oppress the deportees; on the contrary, they did everything they could to bring about their rapid assimilation and therefore granted them the same rights as the local population. All deportees were allowed to take money and movable possessions with them, and in a city as large as Babylon both merchants and craftsmen could easily find work.

But the settlers were absolutely certain that everything that had happened was simply a misunderstanding that God would soon resolve, enabling Judah to free itself from Babylonian rule and the deportees to return to their homeland. In Babylon's Jewish community, people were living with their bags packed: no one intended to settle down seriously in the new place; everyone hoped to return home soon. These hopes were fuelled by ecstatic prophets (v. 21), who maintained that the captivity would not last long.

Jeremiah, by contrast, warns the settlers that the captivity will not end quickly and advises them to settle down in earnest and for the long term (vv. 5–10). Unlike most of his contemporaries, the prophet understood that what had happened was no accident, but a consequence of the people's spiritual condition; until the people turned back to God and repented of their sins, there could be no question of returning to the land of their ancestors (vv. 11–14).

Such words, of course, ran counter to the hopes and expectations of the majority, but the prophet could not, and did not wish to, deceive his fellow people. He understood that the issue was not God's punishment as such, but that allowing the people to return to their former condition without repentance and conversion would mean going back to the very past from which God wanted to lead them away.

Jeremiah, of course, understood very well that God would not lead his people back into the past, that there was no way back and that they could move only forward, along the path of spiritual cleansing and renewal. Only when the people were spiritually renewed would God restore the land of their ancestors to this new people. For many of Jeremiah's contemporaries, everything that was happening was simply politics, in which they thought God ought to intervene on the side of ‘his own’; for the prophet, it was the fulfilment of God's design for his people, a design that had to be fulfilled if they were to have hope for the future. He tries to convey his revelations to his compatriots. But, as so often happens, they prefer to listen to those who say what they want to hear.