Jeremiah 44:1 - Meaning and Application

The Jews in Egypt were now scattered through different parts of the country, including Migdol, Memphis, and other places. Jeremiah was sent by God to speak to them, either when most of them were gathered in Pathros (Jeremiah 44:15) or as he moved from place to place. He gave this message in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.

First, God reminded them of the ruin that had come on Judah and Jerusalem. The captives by the rivers of Babylon kept that loss in mind every day (Psalm 137:1), but the refugees in Egypt seem to have forgotten it and needed to be reminded. They had seen how terrible the condition of Judah and Jerusalem was, and they needed to ask where that ruin came from (Jeremiah 44:2). It came from the anger of God. His wrath and fury set the fire that left Jerusalem and the cities of Judah desolate (Jeremiah 44:6). The armies that destroyed them were only tools. The real cause was the judgment of the Almighty.

Second, God reminded them of the sins that brought that disaster on Judah and Jerusalem. It was their wickedness, especially their idolatry, their worship of other gods (Jeremiah 44:3). They gave honor to false gods, things made by their own hands and imagination, instead of to the true God alone. They turned away from the God they had known, whose name was great, and chose gods they did not know, new-made deities with no worthy history. Neither they nor their fathers could give any good reason for replacing the God of Israel with such impostors. They knew these were not really gods.

Third, God reminded them how often and how clearly he had warned them not to serve other gods, and how serious their disobedience was because they rejected those warnings (Jeremiah 44:4). The prophets had been sent carefully and faithfully to call out to them, saying, “Do not do this hateful thing that I hate.” We should speak of sin with strong dislike, because it is hateful to God, and his judgment is true. We should call sin grievous and disgusting, so we and others will turn from it. We should warn of its danger and its bitter end with seriousness and urgency: “Do not do it. If you love God, do not do it, because it provokes him. If you love your own soul, do not do it, because it destroys you.”

But they would not listen. They did not pay attention or bend their ear (Jeremiah 44:5). They kept on with their idol worship, and the result was that God’s anger was poured out on them, as it is seen even now. That should have warned the people in Egypt. They had not only heard God’s judgments spoken, as their fathers had, but had also seen his judgments carried out. Those judgments were meant to warn others, so they would hear, fear, and not do the same thing.

Fourth, God reproved them for still burning incense to other gods in Egypt (Jeremiah 44:8). That was one reason he had forbidden them to go there, because he knew it would trap them. Those whom he sent into the land of the Chaldeans, though that was an idolatrous country, were by God’s grace weaned from idolatry. But those who went against his will into Egypt were, by their own sinful hearts, drawn even more strongly to idols. When we put ourselves without cause into places of temptation, it is just for God to leave us to ourselves.

In doing this, they harmed themselves and their families greatly. They were sinning against their own souls (Jeremiah 44:7). They were wronging themselves, deceiving themselves with falsehood, and bringing death on themselves. Sin against God is also sin against our own souls. It is the sure path to losing comfort and hope (Jeremiah 44:8), and to losing honor and good name, so that by both their sin and their misery they would become a curse and a shame among the nations. It would become a saying, as miserable as a Jew. It was also the way to cut off their whole family line, all their children and descendants, so that Judah would become a land without heirs.

They also filled up the measure of their fathers’ sins, and, as if that were not enough, they added more to it (Jeremiah 44:9). Had they forgotten the wickedness of those who came before them, so that they were not humbled by it and warned by it? Or had they forgotten the punishments their fathers suffered? Do they not know how dearly that idolatry cost them? Yet they still choose the same empty way of life handed down from their fathers, even though they received the curse with it. He also reminds them of the sins and punishments of the kings of Judah, who, though great, did not escape God’s judgment for idolatry. They should also have learned from the wickedness of the women who led them into idolatry. In the original, “his wives” may point quietly to Solomon’s wives, especially his Egyptian wives, from whom the idolatry of Judah’s kings first spread. Have they forgotten this and what came of it, and now dare to follow the same evil path? See (Nehemiah 13:18, Nehemiah 13:26). Even in their own day, had they forgotten their own wickedness and their wives’ wickedness when they lived in comfort in Jerusalem, and the ruin it brought on them?

But, sadly, what more can be said? God says to the prophet, “They are not humbled to this day” (Jeremiah 44:10). None of the humbling troubles they had faced had broken their pride. They had neither feared God nor walked in his law. Those who do not walk in God’s law show that they do not truly fear him.

Finally, God warns them of complete ruin if they continue in idolatry in Egypt. Judgment has already been pronounced against them, as before (Jeremiah 42:22), that they will perish in Egypt. The decree has gone out, and it will not be taken back.

They had made up their minds to go into Egypt (Jeremiah 44:12). They were stubbornly set against God, and now God says he will set his face against them as well: “I will set my face to cut off all Judah” (Jeremiah 44:11). People who try not only to offend God, but to oppose him directly, will find that they cannot stand against him. “The face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (Psalm 34:16).

This warning is spoken about the idolatrous Jews in Egypt. First, they will all be destroyed, with no exceptions. No rank or class among them will escape, because they will fall from the least to the greatest (Jeremiah 44:12), rich and poor alike. Second, they will be punished with the very same judgments God used against Jerusalem, the sword, famine, and pestilence, or deadly disease (Jeremiah 44:12-13). They will not simply die ordinary deaths, as Israel did in the wilderness, but under these severe judgments, which they thought they had escaped by running to Egypt.

Third, almost none of them will ever return to the land of Judah again (Jeremiah 44:14). They may have thought that, since Egypt was closer, they had a better chance of getting back home than the people taken to Babylon. Yet the captives in Babylon will return, and these people will not. The way God chooses to give us comfort is far safer than the plans we make for ourselves.

We should also notice this: people who are restless and unhappy will be dissatisfied wherever they are, and they will always want a change. The Israelites, when they were in Judah, wanted to go down to Egypt (Jeremiah 42:22). But when they were in Egypt, they wanted to go back to Judah. The margin says they “lifted up their soul” toward it, which means they longed for it deeply. Yet because they would not stay there when God told them to, they will not be able to stay there when they want to. If we live against God, he will deal with us against us. How can people expect things to go well with them when they would not accept that they were already in a good place, even after God told them so?