43
📚And it so happened when Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all the words of the LORD their God, which the LORD their God had sent to them by him, all these words, 2 📚that Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud 📖 men, spoke up, saying to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie 📖. The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to settle there’, 43:1-2 What is in the heart will eventually come out. Men under the control of their sinful nature will usually do what they please regardless of God’s promises or warnings, or the pleadings of God’s servants.⚜
3 📚but Baruch the son of Neriah is setting you against us, to deliver us into the hands of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, or carry us away as captives to Babylon”.
43:3 Perhaps they thought it safer to blame Baruch than Jeremiah.⚜
4 📚So Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the officers of the army, and all the people, disobeyed the voice of the LORD telling them to live in the land of Judah. 5 📚But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the officers of the army, took the whole remnant of Judah that had returned from all the nations where they had been driven to live in the land of Judah, 6 📚men, women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person whom Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah, 7 📚and they went to the land of Egypt; for they did not obey the voice of the LORD. So they came to Tahpanhes.
43:4-7 They acted on their own just as if God had never spoken.⚜
43:7 Tahpanhes was probably in the northeast region of Egypt.⚜
8 📚Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, 9 📚“Take large stones in your hand, and hide them in the clay in the brick kiln which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah, 10 📚and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: See, I will send and get Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne on these stones that I have hidden; and he will spread his royal canopy above them. 11 📚And when he comes, he will defeat the land of Egypt and deliver those who are for death to death, and those who are for captivity to captivity, and those who are for the sword to the sword. 12 📚And I will kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt; and he will burn them, and carry them away as captives. And he will wrap Egypt around himself 📖 as a shepherd wraps his garment around himself; and he will depart from there in peace. 13 📚He will also break the idols of Beth-Shemesh that are in the land of Egypt, and burn the temples of the gods of the Egyptians with fire.’ ”
43:8-13 God was revealing to the people that there would be no safety for them in Egypt. In their unbelief and disobedience they were fleeing from one disaster into another. There was no nation on earth at that time able to successfully resist the Babylonian armies.⚜