Jeremiah 24
The date stamps the scene. Nebuchadrezzar had already carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem (v. 1) - the young king and the skilled, the people you would least expect God to favor by removing. Jerusalem still stood; the temple still stood; a king named Zedekiah still sat on the throne. To anyone left in the city, the verdict looked obvious: the ones taken away were under judgment, and the ones who remained were spared. Into that settled assumption the LORD shows Jeremiah a single image - two baskets of figs set before His temple, one basket of figs very good, the other so bad they cannot be eaten - and asks him what he sees.3
The interpretation reverses everything. The good figs are not the comfortable survivors but the captives: 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). God sends His eyes after them for good; He will build and not pull down, plant and not pluck up. And at the center of the promise is something no exile could engineer for himself: I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD… for they shall return unto me with their whole heart (v. 7). The bad figs, by contrast, are Zedekiah and the remnant who stayed - given to be removed, a reproach and a curse in every place the LORD scatters them (vv. 8-10).
It is a small chapter built on one disorienting truth: the LORD does not measure His people by who looks blessed. Those who appear finished are the ones on whom He sets His eyes for good; those who appear safe are the ones in danger. And the difference between the baskets is not finally their geography but their hearts - the one given an heart to know the LORD, the other left in its refusal. The vision asks the reader to stop reading circumstances as verdicts, and to ask instead where the living God is quietly at work giving the heart that turns home.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 24:1-3What Seest Thou, Jeremiah?
1The LORD shewed me, and, behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the LORD, after that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and the princes of Judah, with the carpenters and smiths, from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. 2One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad. 3Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.
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.3
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. Not merely second-rate, but 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.
Jeremiah 24:4-7I Will Set Mine Eyes Upon Them for Good
4Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 5Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; 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. 6For 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. 7And 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.
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 - the opposite of turning His face away. 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. Not a divided heart, half toward the LORD and half toward idols, which was Judah's long disease; a whole heart, undivided, given back to God. 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.
Jeremiah 24:8-10The Figs Left Behind
8And 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: 9And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall drive them. 10And 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.
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.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 24 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the contrast of te'enim tovot (v. 2, the “good figs”) against the figs ra'ot (“so bad” they cannot be eaten), and for the new-heart promise of verse 7, lev lada'at oti - “an heart to know me.”
- Jeremiah 24 ↔ Jeremiah 31 · Ezekiel 36 · Hebrews 8 & 10Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 24 to the rest of Scripture - the new-heart promise of verse 7 (I will give them an heart to know me) read alongside I will write it in their hearts (Jer. 31:33), a new heart also will I give you (Ezek. 36:26), and the covenant the New Testament announces kept in Hebrews 8 and 10.
- Jeremiah 24 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 24 - the historical setting after the first deportation (v. 1), the force of the fig imagery and the word rendered “naughty” (v. 2), and the covenant language of verse 7, they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Where this echoes in Scripture
What Seest Thou, Jeremiah?
- 2 Kings 24:14-16he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes... and all the craftsmen and smiths... to Babylon.The deportation dated in verse 1 - Jeconiah, the princes, and the skilled carried off to Babylon.
- Amos 8:1-2a basket of summer fruit... Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people Israel.The same prophetic method as verses 1-3 - the LORD shows a basket of fruit and asks the prophet what he sees.
- Matthew 21:42The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.The reversal the vision sets up - what the experts discard becomes, in God’s reckoning, the chosen thing.
- Luke 18:13-14the publican... smote upon his breast... this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.God’s verdict running against appearances, as the two baskets do - the one who looks worst is the one accepted.
- 1 Samuel 16:7the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.The principle underneath the whole chapter - God does not measure His people by what looks blessed.
I Will Set Mine Eyes Upon Them for Good
- Jeremiah 31:33I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts... and will be their God, and they shall be my people.The new-heart promise of verse 7 unfolded in full - the law written inside, the covenant belonging restored.
- Ezekiel 36:26A new heart also will I give you... I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.The same gift as verse 7 - a heart God Himself supplies, the stony one exchanged for flesh.
- Hebrews 10:16I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.The promise of verse 7 announced as kept - the covenant of the new heart fulfilled.
- John 17:3this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.What the new heart is for - the knowing of God that verse 7 promises, named as life itself.
- Jeremiah 29:11-13thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end... ye shall seek me... when ye shall search for me with all your heart.The same word to the same exiles - God’s good purpose for the captives, found by those who seek with the whole heart (v. 7).
The Figs Left Behind
- Jeremiah 29:17-18I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.The same image and the same three judgments as verses 8-10 - the remnant made like the worthless figs.
- Jeremiah 1:10I have this day set thee over the nations... to root out, and to pull down... to build, and to plant.The commission whose two halves are split here - building and planting for the good figs (v. 6), rooting out for the bad (vv. 8-10).
- Matthew 7:24-27a wise man, which built his house upon a rock... a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.Two builders parted by the heart, not the appearance - as the two baskets are parted in this chapter.
- Luke 13:6-9A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.The fig as the figure of a people weighed for fruit - the same test that sorts the baskets here.
- Amos 6:1Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria.The danger of the bad figs (v. 8) - a false safety, mistaking an undisturbed life for the favor of God.