What does Jeremias Chapter 42 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The people promise obedience and receive an answer after ten days. Remaining and going to Egypt receive different announced outcomes. Their disobedience is named without invented hidden motives.

Chapter breakdown

Jeremias 42 brings Johanan son of Caree, Jezonias son of Osaias, captains and people from least to greatest to request prayer for the few who remain: what way to take and what to do. Jeremias promises to report the whole answer. They invoke the Lord as witness and promise obedience whether good or evil. After ten days the word comes and Jeremias calls them.

If they remain quietly in the land, the Lord promises building and planting rather than destruction and plucking up. His being appeased is explained by the edition in terms of sufficient punishment and reconciliation. They should not fear Babylon’s king: the Lord promises salvation, deliverance and mercy with dwelling in their own land. Their stated attraction to Egypt is absence of war, trumpet and hunger. Setting their faces toward Egypt instead brings the feared sword, famine and pestilence, with no survivor escaping the announced evil.

Wrath like that poured on Jerusalem brings execration, astonishment, curse and reproach, and no return. Jeremias says the warning is witnessed against them that day and that their request and disobedience deceive their souls. Their eventual destination is not narrated here. The promise to build and plant is not a command to start cultivation, nor does the chapter establish that their original request secretly sought only endorsement.

The story inside

Opening: The people promise obedience and receive an answer after ten days. Development: Remaining and going to Egypt receive different announced outcomes. Conclusion: Their disobedience is named without invented hidden motives.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The people promise obedience and receive an answer after ten days.
2
Remaining and going to Egypt receive different announced outcomes.
3
Their disobedience is named without invented hidden motives.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 88459–88477
42:2. And they said to Jeremias the prophet: Let our supplication fall before thee: and pray thou for us to the Lord thy God for all this remnant, for we are left but a few of many, as thy eyes do behold us. 42:3. And let the Lord thy God shew us the way by which we may walk, and the thing that we must do. 42:4. And Jeremias the prophet said to them: I have heard you: behold I will pray to the Lord your God according to your words: and whatsoever thing he shall answer me, I will declare it to you: and I will hide nothing from you. 42:5. And they said to Jeremias: The Lord be witness between us of truth and faithfulness, if we do not according to every thing for which the Lord thy God shall send thee to us. 42:6. Whether it be good or evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send thee: that it may be well with us when we shall hearken to the voice of the Lord our God.
Lines 88479–88479
Good or evil.... That is, agreeable or disagreeable.
Lines 88490–88496
42:10. If you will be quiet and remain in this land, I will build you up, and not pull you down: I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for now I am appeased for the evil that I have done to you. I am appeased for the evil that I have done to you.... That is, I am appeased, as I have sufficiently punished you, and now I am reconciled with you.
Lines 88498–88503
42:11. Fear not because of the king of Babylon, of whom you are greatly afraid: fear him not, saith the Lord: for I am with you, to save you, and to deliver you from his hand. 42:12. And I will shew mercies to you, and will take pity on you, and will cause you to dwell in your own land.
Lines 88513–88523
saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to go into Egypt, and enter in to dwell there: 42:16. The sword which you fear, shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt: and the famine, whereof you are afraid, shall cleave to you in Egypt, and there you shall die. 42:17. And all the men that set their faces to go into Egypt, to dwell there, shall die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence: none of them shall remain, nor escape from the face of the evil that I will bring upon them.
Lines 88532–88547
42:19. This is the word of the Lord concerning you, O ye remnant of Juda: Go ye not into Egypt: know certainly that I have adjured you this day. 42:20. For you have deceived your own souls: for you sent me to the Lord our God, saying: Pray for us to the Lord our God, and according to all that the Lord our God shall say to thee, so declare unto us, and we will do it. 42:21. And now I have declared it to you this day, and you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord your God, with regard to all the things for which he hath sent me to you. 42:22. Now therefore know certainly that you shall die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence in the place to which you desire to go to dwell there.