And the princes and all the people said unto the priests and to the prophets, This man is not worthy to die; for he hath spoken to us in the name of Jehovah our God.
Jeremiah was seized in the temple and put on trial for his life. Here the verdict flips, and the reason given points away from his own defence and toward the One who sent him.
The acquittal did not come from the religious leaders. It came from the officials of Judah and from the people. One commentator traces the split along lines of influence:
The princes of Judah showed more conscience than the people or the priests or the prophets. The priests influenced the people, as usually happens. The princes had more independence of mind, and the feelings of the crowd swayed them less. So the weight and seriousness of the prophet's warnings impressed them to some extent.
Jeremiah had aimed his words at these two groups, and passed over the others:
So Jeremiah speaks to all the princes and to all the people. He does not now argue with the priests and the prophets; they were thoroughly hardened and sold to evil. But he does appeal to the princes on the one hand and to the people on the other, who, after all, were simple.
The reason for sparing him points to his authority, not his character:
The prophet pleads his commission from the Lord. He repeats the sum of His words without disguise. He calls on them to repent of their sins, so that the Lord might repent of His judgments. But he leaves himself in their hand, with a solemn warning to beware of shedding innocent blood. His murder would not disprove his commission from the Lord. Nor would it turn God's vengeance away from them or from Jerusalem. The conscience of those addressed answered to his appeal.
The anger against him had a religious root:
They were indignant that the prophet should pronounce ruin upon the holy temple of the Lord. It seemed to them as if his warnings of judgment were an attack on the Lord's blessing upon the nation and on His choice of Israel to be His people. Did not his words prove that Jeremiah had less confidence and less faith in the Lord than they?
Note where the plot against him was formed:
As usual it was the religious element which was most wounded by the word of God and most hostile to His servant. The priests and the prophets, with all the people easily excited and misled, determined on his death, and this in the Lord's house.
The verdict spared Jeremiah's life; it did not change the nation. One commentator weighs what such a swing of opinion is worth:
Poor are the people that are in such a case; those whose own will leads them, and not the Lord, are as unfortunate as they are changeable.
Something steadier than the crowd kept Jeremiah alive:
But when the enemy comes in like this, the Spirit of the Lord, even if He does not lift up a standard, knows how to sustain a witness until the work is complete.
Jeremiah pictures Christ, but the likeness has limits. This verse shows one of them. Jeremiah was spared; his Lord was not:
The Spirit of Christ was in Jeremiah (1 Peter 1:11). We are therefore right to see some foreshadowing of our blessed Lord in him. There is no doubt much about Jeremiah also that stands in striking contrast to Him. For instance, like his Lord, he is led as "a lamb" by his persecutors "to the slaughter" (Jer. 11:19). Yet the likeness stops there, for Christ "opened not His mouth." Again, they said about the prophet, "Let us cut him off from the land of the living." They did not do this to Jeremiah. But they did it to our blessed Saviour (Isa. 53:8).
- Commission — Jeremiah's whole defence was that God had sent him. Killing him would not disprove that, and it would not turn the judgment away from the city.
- Conscience — the officials and the people heard their conscience, and so kept clear of innocent blood. Jeremiah did not even appeal to the priests and prophets; they were already hardened.
- Contrast — the fiercest hostility came from religious men, inside the temple itself. To them, a warning of ruin insulted God's choice of His people.
- Care — the crowd's change of mind rescued him, but crowds are unstable. God knows how to keep His witness alive until the work is done.
- Christ — Jeremiah was let go. The One he foreshadows was cut off from the land of the living, and opened not His mouth.
And there rose up certain of the elders of the land and spoke to all the congregation of the people, saying,
Jeremiah had just preached a sermon that nearly cost him his life. The crowd in the temple was split over whether to kill him. Then a group of older men stands up. They point back to a prophet who had said the same thing long before.
The pressure on Jeremiah did not come from outsiders. It came from the men who ran the worship.
As usual it was the religious element which was most wounded by the word of God and most hostile to His servant. The priests and the prophets decided he must die, and the people were easily stirred up and misled into joining them. All this happened in the Lord's own house.
The elders in this verse speak to that same crowd — the people who had just called for his death.
These men were not great theologians. What moved them was memory of something God had said, and the sense that it still applied to them.
God turns the heart of the princes and of the people towards him. There were some also who regarded the ways of the Lord. Their understanding did not go far, but far enough for deliverance; they feared God. We may note here that conscience laid hold of the word of God in its immediate application.
Another writer traces where the elders found their courage.
The princes and the people took it to heart and declared that he did not deserve to die. This encouraged certain elders to speak. Some fear still seemed to remain in their hearts. They remembered the prophet Micah, who lived at the same time as Isaiah. He had spoken similar words in the days of Hezekiah.
The elders build their case on a comparison between two kings.
Micah had foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple in the days of a good king. That made this example from Hezekiah's reign all the more striking and forceful. So his prophecy was even more surprising than Jeremiah's prediction of the same thing under a bad king. The defence of the prophet was complete.
The elders also point to what the king did with that warning.
Some elders of the land recall Micah's prophecy in the time of Hezekiah. The king listened to him, and so the judgment was held back.
That is the heart of their plea. Killing the messenger never cancelled the message. Listening to it held back the judgment.
The elders are not the last voice in the chapter. Someone then brings up Urijah, another prophet who said what Jeremiah said and was put to death for it. The two examples do not point the same way.
Certain elders quoted precedents — those of Micah (v. 18) and Urijah (v. 20) — the former case argued for Jeremiah and the latter rather against him. We are told, however, "the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death."
One prophet died and one lived. Each outcome carried its own meaning.
Jeremiah was in the greatest danger of being killed as Urijah had been. Yet the Lord watched over him. It was an honour to Urijah to die, but it was a mercy to Judah that Jeremiah was not put to death.
- Remembered. The elders had no new message from God. They only recalled what He had already said through Micah, and that memory turned the trial around.
- Conscience. Their understanding did not go far, but it went far enough for deliverance. Conscience took hold of God's word and applied it on the spot.
- Precedent. Micah foretold the ruin of Jerusalem and the temple under a good king. No one killed him for it, so the case against Jeremiah collapsed.
- Listened. Hezekiah listened to that warning, and the judgment was held back. Silencing a prophet never saved anyone.
- Preserved. Urijah's death showed the real danger. Jeremiah's survival showed God's care — an honour for one man, a mercy for the whole nation.
Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts Zion shall be ploughed [as] a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
To defend Jeremiah, the elders quoted a prophet from a hundred years earlier, whose words people still knew. Their case raises a question worth asking today: what should a nation do when God announces its ruin?
Jeremiah stood on trial for announcing that the temple and the city would fall. The elders picked an example that was hard to answer, and one writer explains why.
This example from Hezekiah's reign was even more striking and forceful. Micah had predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple in the days of a good king. So his prophecy was more surprising than Jeremiah's prediction of the same thing in the days of a bad king. The defence of the prophet was complete.
This sentence was not random. In Micah's book it comes right after a charge against the leaders. They used their place before God as cover for corruption.
Micah does this by again condemning the leaders among the people, who judged for a bribe, and the prophets, who told fortunes for money. All the while they claimed the privilege of Jehovah's presence, a privilege given to this people alone. Nothing offends Jehovah more than this. People who bear the name of His people wrap themselves in the privilege of His presence. They use that claim to honour themselves and to excuse evil, or to hold on to a claim on God despite it. So Zion was to be plowed as a field, and the mountains, now decorated with palaces, were to be made like the heights of a forest.
The picture holds a bitter reversal. The leaders built Zion with bloodshed, so God would turn their city back into plowed farmland. Even the temple hill — "the mountain of the house" — would stand as wooded ground.
They build up Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wrongdoing. Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed as a field.
The elders' point was not just that Micah survived. A king took the threat seriously, and the judgment was put off.
Some elders of the land recall Micah's prophecy in the time of Hezekiah. The king listened to him, and as a result the judgment was held back.
Jeremiah made the same offer to his own generation. He called them to repent, and warned them what killing him would not change.
The prophet points to his commission from Jehovah. He repeats the sum of His words without softening them. He calls on them to repent of their sins, so that the Lord might turn back from His judgments. Then he leaves himself in their hands, with a solemn warning to beware of shedding innocent blood. Killing him would not disprove his commission from the Lord. Nor would it turn God's vengeance away from themselves or from Jerusalem.
The elders quoted Micah word for word, a hundred years after he spoke. That says something about how Judah held his writing.
About 100 years later, Jeremiah announced that Judah would be carried off to Babylon. The oldest people there could still remember the prophecy given in king Hezekiah's time, in Micah 3:12. This proves that God's people recognized and respected the inspired writings of the Old Testament at once.
Jeremiah's own book keeps the quotation and names Micah as its source. One writer draws a lesson from that.
Jeremiah was not afraid that naming Micah would damage his standing as a prophet. Daniel did the same later with Jeremiah, and Amos with Joel. There are few truly original people in the world. We above all others should beware of the spirit of independence. God has set us in "one body" and made us members of one another, so that we depend on each other. So let us not hesitate to admit openly what we owe each other.
God spared Hezekiah's generation, but He did not cancel the words. One writer traces how the prophecy came true, down to a Roman act after Jerusalem's fall.
Zion was to be "plowed as a field," and Samaria made "as a heap of the field." Turnus Rufus fulfilled the first prediction. Under orders from the emperor, he drove the Roman plow over Zion after the city was destroyed in A.D. 70. The second prediction came true as well: people saw the stones of Samaria gathered in heaps.
- Remembered. A hundred years later, ordinary elders could still quote Micah from memory. Judah had guarded his words as God's own.
- Deserved. Zion faced the plow because its leaders judged for money and hid self-interest behind God's name.
- Reprieved. Hezekiah heard the same threat and turned to God. The judgment was put off, and that was the elders' whole argument for sparing Jeremiah.
- Repeated. Jeremiah offered his own generation the same way out. Killing the messenger would not disprove his commission or turn the judgment aside.
- Fulfilled. A delay is not a cancellation. The word stood until the Roman plow went over Zion.