When Good Intentions Meet Stubborn Hearts: A Journey into Jeremiah 43
What’s Jeremiah 43 about?
Sometimes the people who claim to want God’s guidance are the least willing to actually follow it. Jeremiah 43 captures one of those heartbreaking moments when a desperate community asks for divine direction, receives it clearly, then immediately rejects it because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
The Full Context
Picture this: Jerusalem has fallen, the temple lies in ruins, and the Babylonians have just assassinated Gedaliah, the Jewish governor they’d appointed to keep the peace. The remaining Jewish survivors are terrified—convinced that Nebuchadnezzar will return with a vengeance to wipe them out completely. In their panic, they’re ready to flee to Egypt, the traditional place of refuge that had become Israel’s go-to escape route throughout their history. But before they run, they do something that sounds spiritual: they ask the prophet Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord on their behalf.
What unfolds in Jeremiah 43 is the aftermath of that inquiry. After ten days of waiting, God’s answer comes through Jeremiah: stay in the land, trust in His protection, and He will build them up rather than tear them down. It’s a promise wrapped in grace, offering exactly what they need—divine protection and restoration. But there’s one problem: it requires them to stay put and trust God instead of running to Egypt. And that’s precisely what they refuse to do. The chapter reveals the tragic gap between seeking God’s will and actually submitting to it, showing us how fear can make us reject the very guidance we claim to desperately want.
What the Ancient Words Tell Us
The Hebrew in this passage is loaded with irony and emotional intensity. When the people accuse Jeremiah of lying, they use the word sheker, which doesn’t just mean “falsehood”—it carries the weight of deception, betrayal, and breach of trust. They’re essentially saying, “You’re a fraud, Jeremiah. You’re not speaking for God; you’re speaking for your own agenda.”
But here’s what makes this accusation so devastating: they use the same word that the prophets consistently used to describe Israel’s relationship with false gods. The people are projecting onto Jeremiah exactly what they themselves have been doing—speaking sheker instead of truth. It’s like a master class in psychological projection, and the Hebrew text doesn’t let us miss it.
Grammar Geeks
The phrase “you speak falsely” in verse 2 uses the Hebrew construction sheker attah medabber, where the word order emphasizes the accusation. By putting sheker (falsehood) first, the text highlights their immediate, knee-jerk rejection of God’s word. They’re not even considering the possibility that Jeremiah might be telling the truth—they’ve already decided he’s lying.
The verb tenses throughout this chapter tell their own story. When the people make their accusation, they use perfect tenses—completed actions. They’ve already made up their minds. But when Jeremiah had delivered God’s message in the previous chapter, he used imperfect tenses—ongoing, future actions that required their response and participation. The grammatical structure reveals that God’s promises were conditional on their obedience, but they wanted unconditional guarantees on their own terms.
What Would the Original Audience Have Heard?
To Jeremiah’s original audience, this scene would have been achingly familiar. Egypt had always been Israel’s “other option”—the place they ran to when trusting God felt too risky. Their ancestors had fled there during famines, formed alliances with Pharaoh when threatened by other nations, and consistently treated Egypt as their backup plan when God’s provision seemed insufficient.
But every Jewish listener would have known how those Egyptian adventures typically ended: in slavery, disappointment, or divine judgment. The exodus from Egypt wasn’t just ancient history—it was the defining narrative of their identity as God’s people. To choose Egypt over God’s explicit command to stay in the land would have sounded like choosing slavery over freedom, fear over faith.
Did You Know?
Archaeological evidence from Elephantine, an island in the Nile, shows that Jewish communities did indeed flee to Egypt during this period, just as Jeremiah 43 describes. Papyrus documents from the 5th century BCE reveal a thriving Jewish settlement there, complete with their own temple—built in direct violation of God’s law requiring centralized worship in Jerusalem.
The mention of Tahpanhes (verse 7) would have immediately signaled to the audience that this wasn’t just any Egyptian city—it was a military fortress on the frontier, a place where Pharaoh stationed his forces. These weren’t people seeking peaceful refuge; they were aligning themselves with Egypt’s military power structure. In other words, they were choosing to trust in chariots and horses rather than in the name of the Lord—exactly what the Torah had warned against.
But Wait… Why Did They Ask in the First Place?
Here’s what genuinely puzzles me about this passage: if the people had already decided to go to Egypt, why bother asking Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord? Why go through the ten-day waiting period? Why not just pack up and leave immediately?
I think the answer reveals something uncomfortable about human nature. Sometimes we ask for God’s guidance not because we want to obey it, but because we want divine validation for what we’ve already decided to do. We’re not really seeking direction; we’re seeking a spiritual rubber stamp for our predetermined plans.
Wait, That’s Strange…
Notice that the people don’t just reject God’s message—they accuse Jeremiah of being influenced by his scribe, Baruch (verse 3). Why drag Baruch into this? It suggests they can’t quite bring themselves to believe that God himself would give them such an “unreasonable” command. They need to find a human conspiracy behind it all.
The accusation against Baruch is particularly telling. They claim he’s stirring up Jeremiah against them “to give us over to the Chaldeans.” But this makes no sense logically—if Baruch wanted them captured by the Babylonians, why would he encourage them to stay in the land where they’d be relatively safe under Gedaliah’s successor? The accusation reveals their paranoid state of mind, where even their spiritual leaders become suspects in elaborate conspiracy theories.
Wrestling with the Text
This passage forces us to confront some uncomfortable questions about faith and obedience. The people in Jeremiah 43 aren’t irreligious pagans—they’re covenant people who still acknowledge Jeremiah as a prophet, who still invoke the name of “the Lord our God,” and who still go through the motions of seeking divine guidance. Yet they completely reject that guidance when it comes.
What’s particularly heartbreaking is that God’s message through Jeremiah wasn’t harsh or demanding. Look at Jeremiah 42:10-12—God promises to build them up, plant them, show them compassion, and even move the heart of the Babylonian king toward mercy. These are incredibly generous promises. The only thing required was that they stay put and trust God’s protection rather than seeking safety in Egypt.
But fear has a way of making even God’s promises sound like threats. When we’re terrified, trusting God can feel like the most dangerous option available, even when it’s actually the safest. The people of Judah looked at God’s promise of protection and saw only vulnerability. They looked at His call to remain in the land and heard only a death sentence.
“Fear has a way of making even God’s promises sound like threats, turning divine protection into perceived vulnerability.”
How This Changes Everything
Here’s what Jeremiah 43 teaches us that I wish I’d understood earlier in my own spiritual journey: the gap between seeking God’s will and submitting to it can be the difference between spiritual growth and spiritual stagnation. These people weren’t spiritually lazy—they actively sought prophetic guidance. But when that guidance required them to trust God in their most vulnerable moment, they chose the illusion of self-protection over divine promise.
The chapter also reveals something profound about the nature of faith. Faith isn’t just believing that God exists or even that He speaks through His prophets. Faith is trusting God’s character enough to obey His word, especially when that obedience requires us to stay in uncomfortable or seemingly dangerous situations rather than fleeing to our preferred alternatives.
Notice what happens at the end of the chapter: Jeremiah and Baruch are dragged along to Egypt against their will (verse 6). God’s faithful servants end up in the very place they’d warned against, not because of their own disobedience, but because they’re connected to a community that rejected God’s direction. Sometimes faithfulness doesn’t protect us from the consequences of others’ unfaithfulness—it just changes how we experience those consequences.
But even in Egypt, God doesn’t abandon His people. The chapter ends with God speaking to Jeremiah about Nebuchadnezzar’s future conquest of Egypt (verses 8-13), essentially saying, “Even here, in the place you chose over My protection, I am still sovereign. Even your Plan B is still within My plan A.”
Key Takeaway
When fear drives our decisions, we often reject the very guidance we claim to desperately need. True faith isn’t just asking for God’s direction—it’s trusting His character enough to follow that direction, especially when it requires us to stay in vulnerable places rather than fleeing to our preferred safety nets.
Further Reading
Internal Links:
External Scholarly Resources:
- The Message of Jeremiah by Derek Kidner
- Jeremiah: A Commentary by William McKane
- From Slavery to Kingship: Studies in Jeremiah by Louis Stulman
Tags
Jeremiah 43:2, Jeremiah 43:7, Jeremiah 42:10-12, Fear, Faith, Disobedience, Divine Guidance, Egypt, Trust, Prophecy, Exile, Babylon, Tahpanhes
