Two baskets of figs
24
📚The LORD caused me to see two baskets of figs set in front of the temple of the LORD. This occurred after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away 📖 captive Jeconiah 📖 the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the craftsmen and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. 2 📚One basket had very good figs, like the figs that are first ripe, and the other basket had very bad figs, which were so bad they could not be eaten. 3 📚Then the LORD said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” And I said, “Figs. The good figs, very good; and the bad, very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten”.
4 Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 📚“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent from this place into the land of the Chaldeans. 6 📚For I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them, and not uproot them. 7 📚And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. And they will be my people 📖, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with their whole heart.
24:7 A mind to know God is one of His great and glorious gifts (Jer 31:33-34; John 17:3; 2 Cor 4:6; Heb 8:11).⚜
8 📚“And like the bad figs, which are so bad they cannot be eaten”, the LORD definitely says this, “so I will deal with Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the rest of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt; 9 📚and I will deliver them up to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for misery, to be an object of scorn and a proverb, of a taunt and a curse, in all the places where I drive them. 10 📚And I will send the sword, the famine, and the plague among them, until they are consumed from the land that I gave to them and to their fathers”.
24:4-10 The exiles who went to Babylon are likened to good figs because they accepted God’s dealings with them and submitted to the king of Babylon (Jer 21:8-9; 38:2, 17, 18). God had a good purpose in sending them away. He would keep them as good fruit should be kept and bring them back.⚜
24:8-10 God sorted the people as a man would sort fruit. After sending the good fruit to Babylon, He saw to it that the rebels who were left behind would perish in one way or another.⚜