Two men leave Jerusalem for Babylon, sent by the king of Judah to Nebuchadnezzar, and they also carry a letter from the prophet Jeremiah. The famous verse is inside it. It was written to the people of Judah who had been carried off to Babylon, to tell them their captivity would be long and to show them how to live through it.
A man in the adult class I teach once asked me who that letter was written to, and I did not know. I had been handing out the inside of that sentence for years without once opening the envelope.
A prophet promised two years
In the chapter before the letter, a prophet named Hananiah stood in the temple and announced that it was nearly over. “Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the LORD’s house,” he said, in Jeremiah 28:3. Later Jeremiah came back to him with a word from God: “The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie,” in 28:15. The same word told Hananiah he would die that year “because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD,” and the chapter records that he did. Promising people a short wait God had not promised was treated as a serious thing.
The very next chapter is the letter. It is addressed to “the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon,” in Jeremiah 29:1. These were prisoners of war, living in the city of the army that had marched them out of their own. Some of them were hearing from prophets that they would be home soon, and the letter tells them not to listen: “they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them,” in 29:9.
Build houses, plant gardens
The first instructions are about staying.
Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
Jeremiah 29:5-7 (KJV)
Gardens take years. Children marrying takes longer. One reader, a man named Shemaiah, understood exactly what it meant, and complained about it later in the chapter: “This captivity is long: build ye houses,” in 29:28.
Then the timetable, and then the verse.
For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Jeremiah 29:10-11 (KJV)
Where the King James says “an expected end,” the World English Bible has “hope and a future,” the wording most people know from mugs, signs and graduation cards. In English today “you” can mean one person or a whole room. Here it means the whole room. The King James keeps that visible: the exiles are “ye” all through the letter, and in 29:11 the word is “you,” the plural, where a single person would have been “thee.” The thoughts of peace were toward a people in exile, and the good end was a return to “this place,” Jerusalem, after Babylon’s seventy years.
The next lines put the promise inside a relationship: “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart,” in 29:12-13. The hope was a people finding God again, and a road home.
So is it for me?
The road back from Babylon and the seventy-year timetable were theirs. Nobody with this verse on a mug today is waiting for that particular road home. The New Testament does hand Old Testament promises to believers, and often it shows how. Paul does it in Galatians 3: the promises were made to Abraham “and to thy seed, which is Christ,” and “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” That is the step: through Christ, a believer is an heir of what God promised Abraham. Paul does not say every promise in the Old Testament transfers with its dates and places attached.
So, plainly: the Babylon terms are not yours, and the God who made them is. What travels to you through Christ is the character of the God who wrote this letter. He thinks thoughts of peace toward his people. He told them to plant gardens in a country that had taken them. He refused to shorten the wait to make them feel better, and he kept the seventy years he named, later than his hearers wanted: Ezra 1:1 says the LORD stirred up Cyrus to make his proclamation “that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.” The New Testament also asks believers for a prayer that sounds like this chapter, for “kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life,” in 1 Timothy 2:1-2.
Jeremiah 29:11 is the second verse in this series to travel without what aims it, after the money verse that lost three words in a church lobby.
Build where you are
If you are somewhere you did not choose, a waiting room, a failed first try, a city you did not plan on, this chapter has something for you, and it is not a date. The houses and gardens were the exiles’ orders, a picture of people told to settle in and live. A prayer for the people who govern the place that holds you is one the New Testament asks of you as well. Many of them never saw Jerusalem again, and their children ate the fruit and walked home.
God keeps his word on his own schedule, and he cared how his people lived while they waited for it.