Jeremiah 27:8

"And it shall come to pass, that the nation and the kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish saith Jehovah, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. But as for you, hearken ye not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreams, nor to your soothsayers, nor to your sorcerers that speak unto you, saying, ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: for they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land, and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish. But the nation that shall bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, will I let remain in their own land, saith Jehovah; and they shall till it, and dwell therein."

It appears from this paragraph that even the captivity of the whole of Judah might have been averted, even at that late date, provided that Zedekiah had led the people to accept the verdict of Jehovah and faithfully serve the king of Babylon. It was the eventual rebellion of Zedekiah against Babylon that resulted in the final total ruin of Jerusalem and the wholesale deportation of the people into their captivity. It seems to have been the possibility, however remote, of avoiding that ultimate disaster which was the very thing Jeremiah had in mind in his message to the false priests and prophets in Jeremiah 27:16ff.

Zedekiah was a weak and wavering monarch; and he managed to stand with Jeremiah in the events of his fourth year (the date of this chapter); but in his eleventh and final year, he went with the popular movement in favor of rebellion; and the final ruin of Judah was shortly accomplished. In this fourth year of Zedekiah, that monarch made a pilgrimage to Babylon, probably for the purpose of reaffirming his loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar, and for the purpose of convincing Nebuchadnezzar that he had not participated in the coalition which the neighboring nations had attempted to form against Babylon.

All of the evil practitioners mentioned here, the prophets, diviners, soothsayers, sorcerers, dreamers, etc. were banned and forbidden by the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 18:9-13). "They were pedlars of falsehood."[6] They had no message at all from God. They merely told the people what they believed the people wanted to hear. If the nation consented to the overlordship of Babylon, they would have to pay tribute; but they could go on living in their land. Following their false leaders robbed them of this more favorable option.