Jeremiah 24:1 - Meaning and Application

This short chapter helps us see many longer chapters in a comforting light. The same providence, God’s wise rule over events, that is a warning of death to some, can become a source of life to others by God’s grace and blessing. Even when God’s people share the same trouble as others, it is not the same for them. For them, it is meant for good. To them, it is a correcting rod in the hand of a loving Father. To others, it is a judgment sword in the hand of a righteous Judge.

Notice, first, when this message came. It was shortly after Jeconiah’s captivity, in Jeremiah 24:1. Jeconiah, also called Jehoiachin, was himself a humbled and broken king, but some very important people were carried away with him. Ezekiel was among them (Ezekiel 1:12), and many of Judah’s princes were taken as well. Daniel and his friends had been taken a little earlier. Among the common people, only the carpenters and smiths were forced away, either because the Babylonians needed skilled workers, or because they wanted Judah to be left weak, unable to build defenses or make weapons.

It seems many good people were taken in that captivity, which deeply grieved the prophet. At the same time, some people celebrated it and mocked those who were carried away. We must not assume that the first and biggest sufferers were the worst sinners. Here it was the opposite of what many expected.

Second, consider the vision that showed Jeremiah this difference. He saw two baskets of figs placed before the temple, ready to be offered as firstfruits, the first portion given to God in worship. Perhaps the priests were slow to handle them, and that is why Jeremiah saw them standing there before the temple. What mattered in the vision was that one basket held figs that were unusually good, while the other held figs that were very bad.

People are like figs in this picture. As figures of speech, the good figs show those who are useful to God and to others, while the rotten figs show those who are not. Good people are like fine figs, pleasant and valuable. Evil people are like spoiled figs, ugly and useless. A godly person is precious, while a wicked person is hateful in God’s sight. The good figs were like the first ripe fruit, which is most welcome and most prized. The bad figs were so rotten they could not be eaten at all. If God gets no honor from people, and their generation gives no service, they are like figs that are fit for nothing. If salt loses its taste, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out.

Among those who appear before the Lord, some are sincere, and they are very good. Others pretend before God, and they are very bad. Sinners are the worst kind of people, and hypocrites are the worst kind of sinners. What is best, when spoiled, becomes worst of all.

Third, God explains and applies the vision. He meant it to lift up the discouraged captives by promising them a happy return. He also meant it to humble and awaken the proud people still in Jerusalem by warning them of a miserable captivity.

The good figs, the first ripe ones, stand for the godly captives. They seemed first ripe for ruin, because they were taken into captivity first, but they would prove first ripe for mercy. Their captivity itself would help ripen them. They were pleasing to God, as good figs are pleasing to us, and he would carefully preserve them for use.

Those already taken captive were the good figs God owned. This shows, first, that we cannot judge God’s love or anger only by what we can see. When God’s judgments are abroad, those who suffer first are not always the worst people. Second, early suffering can be for our good. A child corrected early is more likely to benefit from it. Those who went first into captivity were like a son a father loves and disciplines early, while there is still hope. That was good for them. The people left behind were like a child left alone too long, who becomes stubborn and worse when corrected later (Lamentations 3:27).

God also says that he himself sent them into captivity (Jeremiah 24:5). Whatever human agents were involved, he directed it. He says, “I have sent them out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans.” It is God who puts his gold into the furnace to test it. In a special way, we must look for his hand in the troubles of good people. A judge sends a criminal to the executioner, but a father disciplines his child with his own hand.

Even this painful and shameful captivity was meant for their good, and God’s purposes never fail. He says, “I have sent them into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.” It seemed harmful in every way. It ruined their property, honor, and freedom. It separated them from family and friends. It put them under their enemies’ power. It also crushed their spirits, discouraged their faith, cut them off from God’s messages and worship, and exposed them to temptation. Yet it was designed for their good, and in the end it proved good for many of them. Out of the eater came food.

Through their suffering they were brought to see their sin, humbled under God’s hand, loosened from the world, made serious, taught to pray, and turned away from evil. In particular, they were cured of their pull toward idolatry, the worship of false gods. So it was good for them that they were afflicted (Psalm 119:67, Psalm 119:71).

God also promises to own them in their captivity. Even if they seem abandoned, he will recognize them. The relatives they left behind may hardly want to claim them, but God says, “I will acknowledge them.” The Lord knows those who are his and will own them in every condition. Nakedness and the sword cannot separate them from his love.

God further assures them of his protection in their trouble, and of a glorious rescue in due time, Jeremiah 24:6. Since they were sent into captivity for their good, they would not be lost there. It would be with them as it is with gold placed in a refiner’s furnace.

He keeps a careful eye on them while they are there, and his eye is for their good. He orders everything so that the suffering serves his purpose, and every part of the affliction works toward that end. He will also make sure to bring them out of the furnace as soon as the work he planned is finished. He sent them away for a while, under severe discipline, but he will bring them back to their Father’s house when their test is over.

He will shape his gold after it has been refined and make it a vessel of honor, fit for his use. In the same way, when God brings them back from their trial, he will build them up and make them a dwelling place for himself. He will plant them and make them his vineyard. Their captivity was meant to shape them like rough stones for his building and to prune them like young trees so they would be fit for planting.

God also promises to prepare them for these outward blessings by giving them spiritual blessings first, as in Jeremiah 24:7. That is what will make their captivity useful for them. It will both improve their suffering and fit them for deliverance. When our troubles are made holy and used for our good, we can be sure they will end well.

They will come to know God better. They will learn more of him through his work in Babylon than they had learned through all his words and worship in Jerusalem. This is a work of divine grace, for without it they would have forgotten God forever. He says, “I will give them a heart to know me,” not just a mind full of ideas, because true knowledge of God is not just theory. It is a settled conviction in the practical judgment, one that guides the will and the heart. “A good understanding have all those who do his commandments” (Psalm 111:10). When God gives a sincere desire to know him, he will also give the knowledge itself. It is God who gives the heart to know him, or else we would perish in our ignorance.

He also promises that they will turn to him fully. They will return to him with their whole heart, making his will their rule, his service their work, and his glory their aim. God himself promises this for them, and if he turns us, then we will be turned. This follows from the promise of true knowledge, because those who know God rightly will not only turn to him, but do so with full heart. People who stay stubborn in rebellion, or pretend in religion, show that they do not really know God.

Then they will be brought back into covenant with God, and this will bring them comfort as before: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God.” God will again own them as his people, by showing himself to them, accepting their service, and acting for their good. They will also be free to own him as their God in prayer and in hope. Those who have turned away from God, if they sincerely return, are welcomed as fully as anyone else to the privileges and comfort of the everlasting covenant. That covenant is well ordered, because every failure in it does not cast us out of it, and because even affliction can come from covenant love.

This is the lesson from the bad figs. Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his princes and followers still remain in the land, proud and secure, as Ezekiel 11:3 says. Many others had fled to Egypt for safety, and they thought they had done well for themselves. They even boasted that, though they had gone against God’s command, they had acted wisely for their own protection.

But both groups, who looked down on those already taken into captivity, are threatened here. Those already carried away were settled in one land and could enjoy one another’s company, though they were in exile. These others would be scattered through all the kingdoms of the earth, with no comfort of one another’s fellowship. Those earlier captives were sent away for their good, but these would be sent away for their hurt. Their troubles would not humble them. Instead, they would harden them. They would not draw nearer to God, but farther away.

Those who were already in exile would be honored by being owned by God in their suffering. These others would be shamed, abandoned by everyone. Wherever God drove them, they would become a reproach and a proverb. People would use them as a joke or a warning, saying someone is as false and proud as a Jew, or as poor and miserable as a Jew. Their neighbors would mock them and laugh at the disasters that came upon them.

Those earlier captives would return to their own land and never see it again in exile. But it would do these no good to argue that the land had been given to their fathers, because they had it from God only on the condition that they obeyed him. The land was never an excuse for disobedience.

The others were reserved for better times, but these were reserved for worse. Wherever they were sent, the sword, famine, and disease would follow after them. These judgments would soon catch up with them and overcome them, because they came with God’s authority. God has many kinds of judgments for those who run from justice. Those who escape one can expect another, until they are brought to repent and change.

This prophecy may have been fulfilled in the people of that generation. Yet since we do not read of any striking difference between Jeconiah’s captives and Zedekiah’s people, it likely also points ahead in a picture-like way to the final destruction of the Jews by the Romans. In that later judgment, those who believed were preserved, but those who kept hardening themselves in unbelief were scattered through many lands as a taunt and a curse, and so they remain to this day.