Jeremiah 29:15

"Because ye have said, Jehovah hath raised us up prophets in Babylon; Thus saith Jehovah concerning the king that sitteth upon the throne of David, and concerning all the people that dwell in this city, your brethren that are not gone forth with you into captivity; thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so bad. And I will pursue after them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth, to be an execration, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations whither I have driven them; because they have not hearkened unto my words, saith Jehovah, wherewith I sent unto them my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith Jehovah. Hear ye therefore the word of Jehovah, all ye of the captivity, whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon."

"Jehovah hath raised us up prophets in Babylon ..." (Jeremiah 29:15). This evidently comes from some communication which Jeremiah had received from the captives themselves. Of course, such prophets were false prophets; and Jeremiah warned against the captive's being deceived by them.

Jeremiah 29:16-17 have the prophecy of the complete destruction of the remainder of Judah in Jerusalem; and we reject the idea that this prophecy does not belong in Jeremiah's letter. Oh yes, it is missing from the Septuagint (LXX), but what of that? As Smith noted, "The whole text of the Septuagint is here so brief and confused as to be practically inexplicable; but on the other hand the Hebrew text represents the original manuscript, and is especially trustworthy in the case before us."[13] "The fact of these verses being lacking in the LXX proves nothing except that the translators of the Septuagint (LXX) were unable to understand the main thought of the passage!"[14] It is for exactly this same reason that present-day commentators would prefer to omit the passage.

The vital relevance of this prophecy against the remainder of Judah in Jerusalem is that it was necessary to silence and destroy the campaign of the false prophets. Their whole message was, "All of us will be back home in Judah within two years." Jeremiah had already been fully verified as a true prophet of God; and this message sent to the exiles effectively killed their whole campaign. It infuriated them; but it also silenced them.

Cheyne's notion that Jeremiah 29:16-20 "are an interpolation"[15] is therefore an unfortunate error. It is another example of a scholar claiming "an interpolation" as an explanation of something he does not understand.

Henderson understood the necessity for these verses in Jeremiah's letter, writing, "They are designed to contradict the false hopes held out to the captives that the Jewish state in Jerusalem should stand, and that they would be restored to their brethren in Judaea."[16]

"Vile figs ..." (Jeremiah 29:17). The captives already knew about this prophecy; but Jeremiah repeated it here. See Jeremiah 24:2f. This letter had nothing in it about the destruction of Judah that was not already known by Zedekiah; and any thought that he would not have allowed a communication like this to go to Babylon is denied by the facts that Zedekiah probably did not see the letter; and that, if he had seen it, he would have allowed it anyway. He evidently believed that Jeremiah was a true prophet. His later rebellion was due solely to his weakness.