Jeremiah 24

The chapter opens by fixing the moment exactly: after that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah… and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem (v. 1). This is the first great deportation. Babylon took the young king and, with him, the leadership and the skilled craftsmen - the carpenters and the smiths, the very people a nation needs to build and to arm. Jerusalem itself was not yet destroyed; the temple still stood, and a king named Zedekiah had been set on the throne in Jeconiah's place.

So the survivors had every reason to read the situation one way: the ones marched off to Babylon were the ones under God's hand, and the ones left in the city were the ones spared. It is against that confident reading that the LORD acts. He does not deliver a speech; He shows Jeremiah a picture - two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the LORD - and lets the image do the work before the word interprets it.

The two baskets could not be more unlike. One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe (v. 2). The first-ripe fig was the prized one - the early fruit that came before the main harvest, sweet and eagerly sought, a delicacy a person watched for and savored. The other basket holds the opposite extreme: figs very naughty, in the older sense of that word - worthless, spoiled, good for nothing - figs which could not be eaten, they were so bad. Rotten past use, fit only to be thrown out.

There is no middle basket, no fair-to-middling fruit. The vision deals in two extremes set side by side, and it sets them before the temple, in the LORD's own presence, as if brought for His inspection. Then comes the question that turns the vision into a summons: What seest thou, Jeremiah? (v. 3). The LORD often draws His prophet out this way - not pouring in the meaning at once, but asking him first to look, and to say plainly what he sees.

Jeremiah answers exactly: figs, the good very good, the evil very evil. He reads the picture correctly. What he cannot yet know is who each basket stands for - and that is where the whole chapter will overturn him.

Now the LORD names the good figs, and the naming is the whole surprise: Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good (v. 5). Every clause cuts against what the survivors assumed. The favored ones are them that are carried away captive - the prisoners, the deported, the ones whose lives look ruined.

The verb is tender: so will I acknowledge them, the LORD recognizing them as His own, owning them, regarding them with favor. And notice who is the actor behind the exile itself: whom I have sent, says the LORD. The deportation was not merely Babylon's doing; it was God's sending - and, astonishingly, for their good. The very thing that looked like abandonment was, underneath, a sending with a purpose of mercy in it.

This does not make the exile pleasant, and it does not pretend the loss was small. It says something harder and better: that the hand of God was in it, working not their destruction but their good. The basket the city pitied is the basket heaven prizes.

The promise then pours out in a series of warm, deliberate verbs: For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up (v. 6). To set mine eyes upon them for good is to fix a watchful, favorable gaze on them, a gaze full of mercy.

Then come two pairs that deliberately reverse the language of judgment. All through this book the LORD has spoken of pulling down and plucking up - the very words of Jeremiah's commission, where he was set over nations to root out, and to pull down… to build, and to plant. Here the destroying half of that commission is canceled for the exiles and only the saving half remains: build and not pull down, plant and not pluck up.

The images are of permanence and rootedness - a house that stands, a tree set deep that will not be torn out again. The people who were uprooted from the land will be replanted in it; the ones who looked demolished will be rebuilt. And every verb has the same subject: I will… I will… I will. The restoration is the LORD's own work from start to finish.

At the summit of the good word stands a promise larger than any homecoming: And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart (v. 7). Land and rebuilding were generous; this is greater. The deepest gift is not a place but a heart - an inward capacity to know the LORD that the people had never managed to hold on their own.

And the giver is God: I will give them an heart. The turning back is not something the exiles will achieve by gritting their will; it is something the LORD will work in them, planting the very organ of devotion. Then the oldest covenant words in Scripture follow - they shall be my people, and I will be their God - the heart of every covenant from Abraham forward, the belonging God keeps reaching to restore. And the result is whole, not partial: they shall return unto me with their whole heart. A whole heart, undivided, given back to God, healed at last of Judah's long disease of divided loyalty.

The chapter quietly explains, then, what really separated the two baskets. It was never finally geography. It was the heart - and the good figs are the ones to whom the LORD gives the heart that turns home.

The other basket now receives its verdict, and again it overturns the survivors' assumptions: And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith the LORD, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt (v. 8). The bad figs are the people who looked spared - the king still on the throne, the officials still in office, the residue still in the city, and those who had fled down to Egypt thinking they had found safety.

The very fact that they remain in this land, which the city read as a sign of favor, is no shelter at all. What follows is the dark mirror of the promise to the good figs. Where the exiles were brought again, these are removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt - the same scattering, but now without the gathering that redeems it. Where the exiles would be a people God owns, these become a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them (v. 9): a byword, the thing other nations point to as a warning.

The point is severe and clear - staying in the land was never the same as being safe in God.

The oracle ends with the three judgments that recur through this book like a tolling bell: And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers (v. 10). Sword, famine, and pestilence are the classic instruments of siege - the army outside the wall, the starvation inside it, the disease that follows hunger - and they will run their course till they be consumed. The most sorrowful note is the last clause: consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers. The land was a gift, promised to the fathers and given in covenant love; clinging to it apart from the God who gave it does not preserve them in it.

There is a hard mercy hidden in the whole comparison, and it is worth naming plainly. The deportation that looked like the curse turned out to carry a sending for good and the gift of a new heart; the remaining that looked like the blessing turned out to be exposure to the full weight of judgment. Sometimes the truly fearful thing is not to be removed but to be left undisturbed in a false peace.

Better the basket carried off to Babylon, where God's eyes are set for good, than the basket left to rot in the place it felt safest.