Day 226: Jeremiah 50–52 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey, Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 226, family, welcome to day 226. And we are in Jeremiah chapters 50, 51 and 52. We got three chapters left in the entire book of Jeremiah and we are done. I'm tempted to sing End of the Road by Boyz II Men. I'm not gonna sing it though. We got a good chunk of reading to do today. Actually, I think that the reading is really, really exciting. And so if you've already done the reading, then everything that I'm gonna say is gonna make perfect sense because you've got context for it. If you haven't done the reading, pause this video, stop the audio and go ahead and read Jeremiah chapters 50 to 52. Let me give you context. So this is a fantastic, just like resolution to the book. We would see maybe the fall of Jerusalem as like the climactic moment of the book. And so this is like the falling action. So this is a great just conclusion to the book. In chapter 50, we are gonna get our, chapter 50 and 51, we're gonna get the largest oracle

of all the oracles against the nations, okay? So this is gonna be larger than the oracle against Egypt or Philistia or Edom or Ammon or Moab. This is gonna be the oracle against Babylon, okay, Babylon. So we are going back in time and then we're gonna go forward in time again. So if you've just kind of been tracking with the narrative, obviously we've experienced the fall of Jerusalem already, but these oracles are given before that, okay? All of the oracles, the oracles from yesterday and the oracle against Babylon for today are gonna be given probably somewhere around 605 BC. So Jerusalem has not fallen yet. Jerusalem hasn't burned to the ground yet, but we are gonna get there in Jeremiah chapter 52. And I'll let you know, hey, we're back in the present. So the focus of chapters 50 and 51 are that even at the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's rise to power, God has already determined that he is gonna judge Nebuchadnezzar, all right? So God or Yahweh is not judging Nebuchadnezzar for something that he's gonna do in the future. God knows exactly what he's gonna do in the future. And moreover, he knows Nebuchadnezzar's heart. And so there's a prophecy that goes forward towards Nebuchadnezzar, even though he's being judged in the prophecy for things that he has not done yet. But that's how prophecy works, right?

Let's think about it this way. What's gonna happen in Jeremiah chapters 50 and 51 is that Jeremiah is gonna prophesy, because you destroyed my temple, I'm gonna destroy your temple, okay? So Yahweh, obviously Yahweh's temple is in Jerusalem. Has Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem yet? No, but Yahweh is saying, because you are going to destroy my temple in Jerusalem, I am going to destroy Babylon, the home of Bel, the home of Marduk, the home of Ishtar. I'm gonna destroy the home of your gods since you are going to destroy the home of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And so these prophecies are going to, you kind of have to forget that you know that these things have happened yet, or else it doesn't feel that predictive. But you know that like Jeremiah is a real prophet because this is exactly what happens. Now, the difference between the prophecies against Judah versus the prophecies against Babylon is that Judah would be restored and allowed to go home. You can see this in chapter 50, verses four to seven, verses 16, verses 19. You can see this in verses 33 to 34. You can see this in Jeremiah chapter 51, verses five to six, verse 10, verse 45. For the people of Babylon, there will be no restoration, no return to glory.

You can see this in chapter 50, verses 39 to 40, chapter 51, verse 26, verse 39, verse 57, verse 62, that the difference between God's oracles of judgment against Judah and God's oracles of judgment against Babylon is that Judah's gonna get to have restoration. Judah is being punished momentarily, but then they're gonna get brought back into the land, whereas Yahweh is going to destroy Babylon forever. And that's true. The Babylonian Empire. is gone, okay? There's nobody. You can't book a ticket to go to the Babylonian Empire. It's out of here, okay? It's gone. The reason given above all for this judgment was vengeance. Babylon would destroy the temple of Yahweh, his house that Solomon had built and David had planned. Yahweh's throne on the earth had been destroyed by Babylon, and so Yahweh in return would destroy Babylon, the home of Bel, Marduk, Ishtar, and other gods of the Babylonians. This is clearly outlined in Jeremiah chapter 50 verse 28, Jeremiah chapter 51 verse 11, verse 24, verse 50 to 51. So that's the oracle against Babylon. Also, there's a lot of language here that John the Revelator is gonna use in the book of Revelation, okay? Babylon is gonna get featured a lot as a word to kind of describe Rome, that the modern-day Babylon is Rome, the Roman Empire, that John is a part of, and that the province of Judah or Judea is a part of. Some of the language that John is gonna borrow is stuff like verse 45, Jeremiah chapter 51 verse 45. It says, "...come out of her, my people, run for your lives, run from the fierce anger of the Lord." That word, come out of her, we're gonna get that exact same imagery, metaphor, language when we get to the book of Revelation. Obviously, it's easier to read, interpret, and understand the book of Revelation correctly when you've actually read the entire Bible, because John the Revelator has an incredible grasp on the Hebrew Scriptures and is going to allude to or directly quote from the prophets in the entire Old

Testament. I mean, like, every other line. And so, knowing the original context of where a lot of this stuff comes from is actually really, really helpful when you get to the book of Revelation, okay? Let's get to the end of chapter 51, okay? Because the end of chapter 51 is really, really fascinating. Chapter 51, verse 59. This is the message that Jeremiah the prophet—this is kind of like a postscript, so it's probably not a part of the original oracle against Babylon, but it's—it actually—this is exactly where it should go. It's actually really cool, okay? This is the message Jeremiah the prophet gave to the staff officer Sariah, son of Nariah, the son of Messiah, whoo, when he went to Babylon with Zedekiah, okay? Zedekiah goes to Babylon. I can actually tell you probably the exact—yeah, there we go. The end of chapter 51 records a diplomatic visit of Zedekiah to Babylon during the fourth year of his reign. So, this is around 594 BC, okay? So, Zedekiah is gonna take a diplomatic visit to Babylon in 594 BC, and in that visit, Jeremiah is gonna see an opportunity to slip a scroll, to slip a prophecy to one of the officers that's accompanying Zedekiah, okay? So, verse 60. Jeremiah had written on a scroll about all the disasters that would come upon Babylon, all that had been recorded concerning Babylon. Verse 61, he said to Sariah, when you get to Babylon, see that you read all these words aloud. Then say, Lord, you have said you will destroy this place so that neither people nor animals will live in it. It will be desolate forever. When you finish reading the scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the Euphrates. Then say, so will Babylon sink, to rise no more because of the disaster I will bring on her, and her people will fall. The words of Jeremiah end here. So, that's actually, Baruch lets us know the words of Jeremiah are done right here, okay? We'll talk about chapter 52 in a moment. Now, here's what's fascinating, okay? So, the prophecy is then tied to a stone and thrown in the Euphrates, and it's a sign act that in the same way that this stone has sank, Babylon is gonna sink. Now, it's not a coincidence that this stone is thrown into the Euphrates, okay? Babylon is mighty, strong, great, majestic, glorious because of the Euphrates. This is actually true of every great city, and definitely ancient cities, okay? Egypt is

wealthy and powerful because it's on the Nile, okay? It is the Nile that produces, water is life. You begin to realize that, especially when you take a trip to Israel. Water is life, and even if you look at America. Like you look at the Mississippi, you look at most cities are situated on rivers because cities need a water source. Rivers are a strategic geographical location in terms of placing cities. So the Euphrates is what makes Babylon glorious in the same way that the Nile makes Egypt glorious. Now, why is that important? Because it is going to be the Euphrates that is going to be the source of Babylon's end. This is going to get picked up in the book of Daniel because in the middle of Baal Shazar's feast, as Daniel is telling him that the Babylonian days are numbered, what was actually happening to the Euphrates River right there at that moment is that Cyrus the Persian, okay, Cyrus the Persian was upriver damming the river, okay. Babylon thought it could never fall. Babylon, one of the mightiest empires of the ancient world thought it could never fall. Cyrus is brilliant. He doesn't siege the city. All he does is he goes upstream of the Euphrates, dams the river so that there's no water that's flowing in the river. And then just so what happens with the city walls is that there's walls surrounding the city, but you have to allow for gates to let the river actually run through the city. So when you build your city on a river, okay, your walls are keeping out anyone who's going to travel on land and obviously no one can jump in the river to go through the gates. But if they dam up the river, then guess what? They can walk on the riverbed and go through your gates and go straight into the city. That's exactly what Cyrus the Persian does. He dams up the river. He dams up the entire Euphrates River and his entire army just walks through the gates because the whole river is, they're walking on dry ground, okay. The same way that the Nile became a source of plague and pestilence in the Exodus, the river that is their glory, the river that they worshiped becomes a thing that is no longer the pinnacle of glory but of horror, the same thing, that same reversal is going to happen with Babylon, okay. And so the same way that stone sinks to the bottom of the Euphrates, Babylon is going to sink and it's going to sink because Cyrus the Persian is going to dam up the Euphrates River and just walk in uncontested. He's literally going to defeat the entire Babylonian empire in a night, gone. And so all the oracles against Babylon are going to be fulfilled in a single night. Then we get to chapter 52, okay. Chapter 52 is essentially straight verbatim from 2 Kings, okay, and it's gonna end on the most hopeful note. We're gonna see, it's gonna say, we're gonna get an entire recounting

of the fall of Jerusalem and then we're gonna go all the way down to the bottom to verse 31. It's gonna say this, in the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the year of Awel Marduk became king of Babylon on the 25th day of the 12th month he released Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and freed him from prison. This is literally 2 Kings chapter 25, copy and pasted. Okay, so 2 Kings and Jeremiah are gonna end with the exact same words. He spoke highly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than any of those other kings that were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king's table, the king of Babylon, the new king of Babylon, one of Nebuchadnezzar's heirs. Day by day, the king of Babylon gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived to the day of his death. Why is this so huge? It's because a son of David is released from captivity. This is massive. Jeremiah ends his entire book on a note of hope, hope attached to a son of David. Judah had lost everything. Judah lost its land. It lost Jerusalem. It lost the temple. It lost their kings, everything that gave them their identity. But now their last true king is released from bondage. Yahweh was not finished with the house of David. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, I've memorized the list of the last 5 kings. It's Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. What do you mean? Zedekiah is the last true king? No. Remember, Zedekiah is older than Jehoiachin. Zedekiah is Jehoiachin. uncle. So Jehoiachin is really considered the last living heir of David, the last king of David, which means this last true king being released from bondage means that Yahweh is not finished with the house of David. There is still hope for David and there's still hope for the Jewish people. If he was freed, they too could be freed. If he was restored and honored, they too could be restored and honored. In the bigger picture, this act of hope would lead to David's line restoring Israel. It was the grandson of Jehoiachin, Zerubbabel, who would lead the people home from exile, rebuild Jerusalem, and rebuild the temple. And of course, it was another of his descendants, the son of David, who would bring hope and restoration to the world and build the new temple, which was his body, the church. And that heir of David is none other than Jesus Christ. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble and I signed a

bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble or you can go to a Books-A-Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of Scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. Alright, back to the episode. What is our timeless truth? Our timeless truth flows straight out of that last Nerdy Nugget. Jehoiachin's release is one of the great turning points in the biblical story. That's why it's in two places, copied and pasted. It's at the end of Jeremiah and it's at the end of 2 Kings. This is one of the great turning points in biblical history. This is one of those moments where you realize, oh, this is emphasized a lot. Like every time I've been in school for my undergraduate degree or my master's or my doctorate and you study the Scriptures, this moment right here of Jehoiachin being released from prison emphasized with a lot of emphasis. I know that's a funny sentence. Emphasized with a lot of emphasis. But in church, not really talked about. Not something that is emphasized at all in church. But this is a massive turning point in the biblical story. It tells us that even in such despair, exile, and imprisonment, that God had not abandoned his plans for the sons of David. That he had not abandoned his covenant with David. Jehoiachin would give the world a man by the name of Zerubbabel. And Zerubbabel would give the world Jesus. It is a reminder that God's promises for us never depend on our current situation and state of mind. They depend on the one who is always faithful, always righteous, whose steadfast love never ceases, whose words always come to pass. And with that, we end the entire book of Jeremiah. I think that that ending for the book of Jeremiah leaves on a hopeful note. And the same reason that 2nd Kings chooses this ending is the same reason why Baruch probably chose this ending for the book of Jeremiah. To not leave on a note of

despair, but to leave on a note of hope. To leave on an upward trajectory. That although things look hopeless, and although this man had been in prison for 37 years, no one is beyond hope. And if this man can be restored, then the entire nation can be restored. And if this man can be restored, you can be restored. I can be restored. The restoration is always God's goal, and it's always God's job. One last note about restoration. Restoration is a word that we use a lot in church, and sometimes when we use restoration in church, it's almost like, yep, here's where you were, then there was a moral failure, we're gonna restore you to where you were, right? And a lot of times this doesn't even happen, right? Pastors that have moral failures, they don't really get restored. They have some lesser title than they had previously, and sometimes, I get that, there are real consequences that people have to actually deal with. But here's how God sees restoration. And I was watching this show called Rust Valley Restorers that took old cars and restored them. You wanna know what's funny? Is as they restored these cars, they didn't just take them back to their original value, but they became more valuable than their original value. They'd find a car from like the 1950s. And in the 50s, you know, this car was, it's $5,000. And they would find this car, it's worth nothing. You know, they buying it for pennies on the dollar. And then they put hard work, blood, sweat, and tears into these vehicles. And now all of a sudden they're selling them for 50, 100, 150, $200,000. Because God's version of restoration is not just to bring you back to where you fell from, but to bring you higher into a greater capacity

from where you fell from. And so my hope and my prayer for you and our timeless truth as we end the book of Jeremiah is that God would restore you, that he would restore your finances, that he would restore your health, that he will restore your calling, that he will restore your confidence, that he will restore anything that has been broken as a result of sin, disobedience, and rebellion. That God is a God of restoration. And with that, we wrap up the entire book of Jeremiah. Tomorrow, we've got day 227, and we're starting a brand new book of the Bible. We're gonna march our way into the book of Ezekiel. We've already dropped Ezekiel's name as we've been talking about Jeremiah because Ezekiel got deported while Jeremiah was still in Jerusalem prophesying. So we've heard Ezekiel's name, but tomorrow we actually get to dive into the book of Ezekiel. It's gonna be great. We've got the first three chapters of Ezekiel for us tomorrow to read. And I'll be doing what I always do. I'll be giving context clues, nerdy nuggets, and timeless truths. I'll see you right here tomorrow. If you're on a streak, I'm so proud of you.

I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.