A future and a hope
Exile in Jeremiah 29 | Favorite verses pt. 3
My relationship with the Old Testament changed when I realized that the story it’s telling is the story of my spiritual family.
So often, I’ve read the OT with a sense of detachment. Let’s be honest: there’s some messy and weird stuff in there. Even the most righteous among the Israelites had their fair share of embarrassing, disturbing moments.
I’m sure it was my own pride blinding me, but it was always easier to stomach these stories when I felt like they were somehow existing on a different timeline from mine. “I’m a New Testament Christian—not an Old Testament Israelite. Those guys had some stuff to figure out; thankfully, we’ve had Jesus to set us straight.”
There are some obvious issues with this way of thinking. For one, it’s a hair’s breadth away from Marcionism, an ancient heresy that rejects the “god of the Old Testament” and does away with that history entirely.
I read a book earlier this year (Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels by Richard B. Hays) that helped me start adjusting the way I relate to Old Testament texts by illustrating how some of the earliest Christians—the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—used Jewish scripture to understand Jesus, and vice versa.
Suddenly, the continuity began to appear. Often, I think we look at the Old Testament as a collection of Easter Eggs that hint at Jesus, setting aside the rich story it tells to instead focus on the part that makes more sense. But these texts are so much more than that.
The story of Israel simply is the story of Christianity before Christ. Jesus is the direct product of this nation, whose detailed, dramatic history is so well preserved in the pages of the Old Testament.
The Israelites didn’t stop being God’s chosen people once Jesus came onto the scene; instead, they were the vehicle through which God blessed all the nations, as he promised so many times (see Genesis 12:3: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”). Their history cultivated the olive tree that “us Gentiles” were grafted into (see Romans 11).
That means that the story of Israel is exceptionally important, especially to those of us who consider ourselves Christians.
This week, for the third installment of the Favorite Verses series, we’re finally taking a look at an Old Testament verse.
You know it; you love it; you’ve definitely seen, given, or received a graduation card that quotes it….it’s Jeremiah 29:11. (Confetti! Applause!)
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
And, of course, its real meaning is sooo much more interesting than the Hallmark treatment it often gets. So, let’s get into it!
But first, a quick disclaimer: This post isn’t meant to shame you (or anyone, for that matter) for using this verse “out of context.” If these words have comforted you in times of uncertainty, then you can relate to your Israelite ancestors even more deeply.
The prophet Jeremiah
Every good journalism student knows that you can get a long way towards understanding a story with just five Ws and an H; that is, by asking who, what, when, where, why, and how?
So, we’ll start at the beginning: who said this, and why?
The words of Jeremiah 29:11 are spoken by God, but reported to the people of Israel—specifically, those living in the southern kingdom of Judah—via his prophet Jeremiah.
To understand the full heft of what verse 11 is trying to communicate, it’s best to back up some. In short, the book of Jeremiah is a record of Jeremiah’s teachings as God’s prophet to Israel.
Jeremiah lived from roughly 650-570 BC and was commissioned to prophesy to Israel during a time of mass unfaithfulness to God and injustice to one another. Notably, Jeremiah’s tenure as a prophet overlapped with the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem.
This event, the holy city being conquered by a foreign nation which sent all the people of Israel into exile, is a cornerstone event for the story of Israel. It is also one event of many that illustrate the theme of exile throughout the Old Testament, a theme that would define the Jewish people and their Christian posterity for generations to come. (More on that later.)
The capture of Jerusalem was not necessarily a one-and-done event; there were at least two sieges, about ten years apart, that sent the Jewish people into exile and ultimately resulted in the end of the kingdom of Judah.
Verses 1-3 of chapter 29 let us know that Jeremiah’s letter is coming in between these two events. The people living in the kingdom of Judah have seen many of their leaders captured and taken by the Babylonians already, and a second siege is imminent. That’s why this message of hope and God’s special attention to his people is so welcome and so important.
The context
So, now that you’ve got some situational awareness, here’s Jeremiah 29:4-14:
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.
“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”
The rest of the chapter addresses specific groups of individuals who are falsely prophesying in the name of the Lord.
The theme: Exile and return
As I alluded to earlier, the theme of exile is central to our story as believers. It starts on the first few pages of the Bible: After Adam and Eve sin, they are exiled from Eden, no longer permitted to walk alongside God in the garden.
The story of Moses is the story of a journey from one exile to another. After hundreds of years enslaved in Egypt, the Hebrew people have a new hope of nationhood and freedom via the persistence of Moses…that is, until they forget the Lord’s kindness and are consigned to wander in the desert for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land.
The Babylonian exile prophesied by Jeremiah is perhaps the most dramatic. This time around, I found the instructions given in verses 5-7 particularly striking. Take another look at verse 7:
“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
The direction isn’t to find an escape, fight their captors, or withdraw into themselves once they’re in Babylon. It’s not to assimilate, either. Instead, it’s to remain faithful to God and to do everything in their power to make Babylon more like the idealistic goal that Jerusalem was intended to be—ultimately, more like Eden.
There’s a practical reason for this, which is revealed in verse 10: the exile is going to last 70 years, which means that several generations of Israelites will need to figure out how to live, work, raise families, and worship God in their new home.
But there’s some eternal wisdom here, too. I saw a J.R.R. Tolkien quote a few weeks ago that has been rolling around in my mind ever since. In a letter to his son, he wrote the following:
“We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.”
That’s the connection between the Old Testament and the New; between ancient Israelites and modern Christians; between Genesis and Revelation.
You see, we haven’t really seen a return from that very first exile that separated us from the presence of God—not yet. We’re still waiting, “on the shores of Babylon,” for the final reconciliation to happen, the final return that will wipe tears dry, make all the sad things untrue, and set wrong to right once and for all.
We have hope. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ makes that certain. Yet, there’s still an unfulfilled longing that saturates our every moment on earth, intensified by the brief glimpses of Truth that God allows us by his grace to experience here.
God revealed to the Israelites in Jeremiah 29:11 that their exile would not be forever; he had a plan for their future, plans that they could count on during the long days and years to come. In the same way, we have a hope that our ultimate exile will end; that we will be reconciled with the Creator once and for all.
In the meantime: continue seeking him. Invest in the welfare of your temporary home. Know that your True Home is waiting.
From the archives:
“I know that you can do all things,
And that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
And a recommendation:
If you want more info about the book of Jeremiah, this short video is a great place to start.
Brilliant!