Jeremiah 23 Study Notes

23:16-17 These peace prophets created messages as figments of their own minds. They deceived the people by promising peace, prosperity, and success. The false prophets were deluding the people, a word reflecting the Hebrew noun hevel (“vapor,” “futility,” “transitoriness”), as used in the book of Ecclesiastes.

23:18 Some understand the council of the Lord to be a gathering of divine beings over whom God presided or consulted, as was believed in Near Eastern polytheism. But the biblical concept is different. The “council of the Lord” referred to God’s desire to share his teaching with his prophets, as Amos declared (Am 3:7).

23:19-20 This announcement of judgment is repeated almost identically in 30:23-24. The storm (4:11-12; 13:24; 18:17; 25:32) unleashes the purposes of God’s heart for judgment.

23:21-22 Even though God did not send out these prophets, yet they ran (cp. 2Sm 18:19). They had no authority as God’s couriers and no understanding of God’s purposes.

23:23-24 God is not a pagan local god confined to his shrine or temple. He is both immanent (near) and transcendent (far).

23:25-29 Jeremiah did not deny that God sometimes uses dreams. He used them with Joseph (Gn 37; 41) and with authentic prophets (Nm 12:6). But the dreams to which the prophet referred here were fabricated and preyed on the gullible. The dreams of the false prophets were like straw, not grain. God’s word, by contrast, was like a hammer that pulverizes rock.

23:30 Since they did not truly speak from God, God said the false prophets could only plagiarize my words from each other as they made up false messages in God’s name.

23:32 False dreams presupposes v. 25. For it was not I who sent or commanded them, see 14:14.

23:33-38 The word burden comes from the Hebrew verbal root nasa’, meaning “to lift up.” All instances of the Hebrew noun massa’ imply a “burden,” for all are judgment passages. So when the people or the false prophets asked, What is the burden of the Lord? (v. 33), the answer was the short retort given in the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint (LXX): “You are the burden.” The pun of the two senses of “burden” (prophetic burden of judgment and the burden of trying to speak to stubborn people) recurs throughout this section.

23:39-40 Because of the deceptive words of the false prophets, God would surely forget them and throw them away from his presence—a drastic measure for a serious offense.