The Last Days of Jeremiah (Chs. 40-45). 

        When Jerusalem fell at last, Jeremiah received his supreme vindication by God. He was the one man from among the whole people who was left completely and absolutely at liberty (40:4f).

        With the World before him, there must have been a strong temptation to go to Babylonia, where he would have received a warm welcome from the better elements taken there with Jehoiachin. What a shelter for his old age one like Daniel would have made for him! On the other hand he might have sought a shelter somewhere in a less devastated corner of his own land. But Jeremiah was bound to his own people. He had served them in good and evil times for forty years, and now he stayed with those that needed him most (40:6); but from them he was to experience the final mockery.

        Asked by the leaders of the people what they should do after the murder of Gedaliah (42:1-6), he spent ten days in prayer before he knew for certain that the insistent voice of heart and mind was also the voice of God (42:7-18) — no other answer would have been consistent with his earlier prophecies; but that did not free him from the obligation of seeking God’s face. Note that in accordance with frequent Hebrew practice, the whole of Jeremiah’s answer is put to­gether, though 42:19-22 is obviously Jeremiah’s answer after he had been accused of lying and acting as Baruch’s tool (43:3).

        Though the people accused him of lying and rejected his message, yet they dragged him with them into Egypt (43:6). Tough they were unwilling to believe the prophet, they could n do without him. That is the tragedy of Judah — and of a religious man. He could not do without God, but he would not obey Him; he constantly reformed, yet ever hankered after his old idolatry (ch. 44).

        In Isaiah we have the Church foreshadowed in the remnant; in Jeremiah we have the Church made possible by the individual’s living contact with the living God unbound by the ties of family, country or religion.