BIBLE STUDY LESSON 12

SERIES P --- YHVH’S PROPHETS

JEREMIAH STILL REJECTED

THE MURDER OF GEDALIAH

From Jeremiah 41-43

Sometime in October Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and grandson of Elishama, a member of the royal lineage of King David, came to Mizpah with ten top officials of the king. Gedaliah held a banquet for them and while they were eating Ishmael and the men with him arose and murdered Gedaliah, the man the king of Babylon had appointed as governor of the land. Ishmael also murdered the other Jews who were with Gedaliah, as well as the Chaldean soldiers stationed at Mizpah. These murders were still unknown the next day when eighty men approached Mizpah with beards shaved, clothing torn, and bodies cut, bringing their offerings of grain and incense from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria. Ishmael met them with tears in his eyes and invited them in to see Gedaliah. But when the eighty men came into the city, Ishmael and his men murdered them also and threw their bodies into a cistern. Only ten of the eighty were spared because they had said, [You should not kill us for we have wheat, oil, barley, and honey hidden in the fields.] The cistern where Ishmael threw the bodies of these men was the one which King Asa had made to help him defend Mizpah against King Baasha of Israel. Ishmael next captured the remaining Jews who were left behind in Mizpah, the king’s daughters who lived there, and all the other people whom Nebuzar-adan, King Nebuchadnezzar’s captain, had left there in Gedaliah’s care. Ishmael took his captives and set out for the land of the Ammonites. When Johanan the son of Kareah and the captains of the forces which were with him heard of Ishmael’s evil deeds, they went out to fight against him, overtaking him at the great pool by Gibeon. When the captives saw Johanan and his forces coming, they broke away from Ishmael and ran to join Johanan. Ishmael then escaped with eight other men and hid in the land of the Ammonites. Then Johanan took all these captives who had been with Ishmael, including women, children, and eunuchs, and went with them to Geruth Chimham, which is near Bethlehem. From there he planned to take them away into Egypt, for they were afraid of what the Chaldeans would do when they learned that Ishmael had murdered Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon had appointed as governor of the land. All these people, including Johanan and his captains and the least to most important of the people, came to Jeremiah for advice. [Pray for those few of us who are left in the land,] they said. [Ask Adonai what we should do and where we should go.] [I have heard your request and will pray for you,] Jeremiah answered: [Whatever He tells me, I will share with you and will withhold nothing.] [May Adonai put a curse on us if we fail to follow His counsel,] they said. [We will obey all that Adonai tells us to do; whether it is good or evil, we will do as He says so that things may be well for us.] After ten days, Adonai spoke to Jeremiah and told him what he should say to the people. [If you remain in this land,] Adonai said, [I will build you up and not tear you down, I will plant you and not uproot you. I am sorry for all the trouble you have had. You must not fear the king of Babylon as you do, for I will be with you and keep him from harming you. I will have compassion on you and cause him to have compassion on you and let you live in this land. But if you refuse to live in this land and determine to go to Egypt, thinking you will escape war, alarms, and hunger, I tell you that the war you seek to escape will follow you to Egypt, and the hunger you fear will also follow you, and you will die there in the land where you seek refuge. You who go to Egypt will die there by war, hunger, and disease, and none shall escape. As My anger was poured out on the people of Jerusalem, so it will also be poured out on those who run away to Egypt. You will become a curse to the people of that land and will never again return here to your own land. I warn you not to go to Egypt.] Jeremiah warned the people further and reminded them that they had asked him to pray for YHVH’s guidance. [You sent me to Adonai to pray for you,] Jeremiah said. [And you promised to do whatever Adonai would instruct you to do. I have told you today what Adonai has said, but in the past, you never obeyed Adonai’s Instructions which He gave through me. Let me warn you once more that you will die from war, hunger, and disease if you insist on going to Egypt.] When Jeremiah was through speaking, Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the other proud leaders argued with him. [You are lying!] they said. [Adonai didn’t tell you these things. Baruch the son of Neriah has set you against us to give us into the hands of the Chaldeans so they can put us to death or take us away as captives into Babylon.] These leaders would not obey the voice of Adonai and stay in the land of Judah. Johanan and the other captains of the forces rallied the people of Judah who had returned from other lands, and headed for Egypt. These people included men, women, children, the king’s daughters, and all those whom Nebuzar-adan had left with Gedaliah, Jeremiah, and Baruch. When they entered Egypt, they went to Tahpanhes. While the people were there at Tahpanhes, Adonai spoke to Jeremiah again. [While the men of Judah watch, bury large stones in the mortar of the pavement at the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace at Tahpanhes. Tell them that this is what I will do, ‘Adonai will bring Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, here to Egypt. And My servant Nebuchadnezzar will set his throne on these rocks that I have buried, spreading his royal canopy over them. ‘He will conquer the land of Egypt, killing those who deserve to die, and capturing those whom I have marked for captivity, while others die from disease. He will burn the temples of the gods of Egypt, destroying the idols and capturing the people of the land. He will clothe himself with the treasures of Egypt as a shepherd clothes himself with his cloak. He will do all these things without harming himself. He will even break down the obelisks of Heliopolis which are in the land of Egypt, and he will burn the temples of the gods of Egypt with fire.’]

COMMENTARY

EGYPT: REFUGE FROM DANGER

Like Abram, later generations fled to Egypt to escape famine or danger. Some Hebrews even made the land their home. But others knew Egypt only as a land of captivity or as a conqueror. For Joseph, the land of the Nile was an unknown and hostile place. Sold by his brothers to traders who took him to Egypt, Joseph eventually became governor. When a famine struck Canaan and his brothers came to Egypt for grain, Joseph persuaded his family to move there. The Hebrews settled in the pastureland of Goshen on the borders of Egypt. But Joseph’s descendants were not so fortunate. Another pharaoh forced the Israelites to work as slaves. By the time the Hebrews left to make Canaan their home, Egypt had already been great for nine centuries. When King David attacked the Edomites generations later, Hadad, one of the royal family of Edom, fled to Egypt. The pharaoh gave the Edomite his wife’s sister to marry and allowed their son to grow up with his own children. When David died, Hadad returned to Edom even though the pharaoh wanted him to remain. The years to come saw peace between Egypt and Israel. Solomon made an alliance with Egypt by marrying pharaoh’s daughter. For a wedding gift, pharaoh captured Gezer, one of the Philistine cities never conquered by Israel, and gave it to Solomon. The same pharaoh probably welcomed Solomon’s rival Jeroboam, who hid from Solomon in Egypt. Jeroboam returned home to rule after Solomon died. Meanwhile pharaoh invaded Judah, looting Rehoboam’s palace and the temple. A later Egyptian invasion, during the reign of Asa, failed. Intent on building an empire in Syria and Palestine, the Egyptians resorted to diplomatic conspiracy instead of military force. Their tactics influenced rulers in that region to resist their Mesopotamian masters. After an Egyptian-inspired revolt under Hoshea resulted in Israel’s exile to Assyria, the Assyrians penetrated Palestine and controlled Egypt for a while. Later, the Egyptians marched out to help Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar’s siege. Even though the Egyptians were defeated and withdrew, the Jews turned to Egypt for refuge, fearing Nebuchadnezzar’s revenge at the murder of Judah’s Babylonian governor. They forced Jeremiah to go with them to the land he had denounced all his life. In Egypt the Jews found Syrians, Greeks and other Jews who had settled there earlier. They worshiped a collection of many pagan deities, and this encouraged the new exiles to do so too. But even in Egypt, the Jews were not safe from their enemies. Nebuchadnezzar probably invaded the land twenty years later. The lasting conquest of Egypt was to come with the Persian invasions.