Day 166 – April 5, 2024: Jeremiah 38-42 and Psalm 55

The story of Jeremiah continues. I hope you are following what has just happened. So the king of Babylon is on the threshold of Jerusalem and is about to take over the land. God has told Jeremiah, who in turn has told the king, not to try to escape, but rather to allow the Babylonians to take over the land which will result in the king going into exile. But he says, that’s okay, this is going to happen, allow yourself to go into exile and make yourself a home once you are in exile. If you try to escape, or if you try to fight, then God will bring about certain calamity. So the king doesn’t listen and he takes his people with him and they try to escape to Egypt. As a result the Babylonians catch up with them before they make it and kill the kings children in front of him and then gouge out his eyes and take him to Babylon. It was going to happen, but it didn’t have to happen that way.

The king of Babylon allows the poorest of the poor to stay in the land of Judah and establishes a puppet ruler over them. Well, there is one Judean who is unhappy with the proceedings and conspires to overthrow this puppet ruler. This Ishmael goes and kills the puppet ruler but then flees once the Babylonians come to put things back in order. The people who remained in the land are concerned because when this Ishmael killed the puppet ruler he also killed a number of Babylonians who had been protecting him. They come to Jeremiah and ask him if they should stay or if they should flee and would he ask God what their next step should be.

Jeremiah commands them to stay because they will be allowed to stay and farm the land, but we get a feeling that they are not going to listen to Jeremiah and are going to flee. Jeremiah warns them that if they flee then God will pursue them to Egypt, where they were planning on fleeing, and there in Egypt both famine and sword would find them. I would think one would listen to God if those were your options.