Jer 23 | TNotes | STEP | Summary for Jer 23:1-8: 23:1-8 The Lord rebuked the three kings (ch 22 ) and contrasted them with the righteous leader he would place over his people after the Exile. 23:1 Kings in the ancient Near East were often referred to as shepherds . Good shepherds would protect and care for their people, but Judah’s kings scattered their people instead.

Summary for Jer 23:1-8: 23:1-8 ^a The Lord rebuked the three kings (ch 22 ^b) and contrasted them with the righteous leader he would place over his people after the Exile. 23:1 ^c Kings in the ancient Near East were often referred to as shepherds. Good shepherds would protect and care for their people, but Judah’s kings scattered their people instead.
23:3 ^d As a good shepherd, the Lord would gather the exiles and place them in their own sheepfold, the land of Judah. There, they would be fruitful and increase in number (cp. Gen 1:28 ^e; 17:6-8 ^f).
23:4 ^g Once the people were back in Judah (23:3 ^h), the Lord would appoint responsible shepherds. As good leaders, they would care for the people.
23:5 ⁱ A righteous descendant of King David’s line, whose ruling power had temporarily come to an end, would be a King. In stark contrast to the three kings the Lord had just rebuked (ch 22 ^j), this King would have wisdom and act in a way that is just and right (33:15 ^k; Isa 11:1-5 ^l; 53:2 ^m; Zech 3:8 ⁿ; Luke 1:32-33 ^o).
23:6 ^p This ruler would have the name The Lord Is Our Righteousness (Hebrew Yahweh Tsidqenu), an interesting reversal of Zedekiah’s Hebrew name (Tsidqiyyahu), which means “Righteous is the Lord.” Zedekiah’s character and the chaos of his reign were the opposite of the future King’s character and the salvation and safety that his reign would offer.
Summary for Jer 23:9-32: 23:9-32 ^q These short poems and interjections appear to be excerpts from a session in which the Lord prepared Jeremiah to prosecute the false prophets of Jerusalem. Because these leaders had misused the Lord’s name, they incurred his wrath (Exod 20:7 ^r).
Summary for Jer 23:9-10: 23:9-10 ^s Jeremiah stood in the Lord’s presence, shocked by the severity of the Lord’s decrees of doom on the religious leaders.
23:10 ^t People everywhere engaged in adultery. They thought that the ritual sex of Baal worship would guarantee good crops, but instead it brought the curse of a crop-destroying drought upon the people of Judah.
23:11 ^u Judah’s religious leaders had committed despicable acts, not just in their private lives and in the hills and fields where pagan worship occurred, but even in the Temple, in the presence of the Lord.
23:12 ^v As a result of their wickedness, these priests and prophets would have no stability in their lives; every moment would be filled with danger.
Summary for Jer 23:13-14: 23:13-14 ^w Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, had been dominated by Baal worship supported by the government prophets (1 Kgs 18:19 ^x; see also Jer 16:12 ^y). The religious leaders of Judah were even worse.

• Sodom and Gomorrah represented the worst of this kind of wickedness (Gen 18:20 ^z).
23:15 ^aa Although the people needed to be held responsible for their own sins, the prophets bore the blame for Jerusalem’s spiritual apostasy.
Summary for Jer 23:16-32: 23:16-32 ^ab The Lord appealed to the people to reject these prophets and listen instead to his word. 23:16 ^ac The false prophets gave the people futile hopes; they had not been commissioned to speak for the Lord, and their ideas came from their own imaginations.
23:17 ^ad These prophets lied to the people, assuring them that peace would soon come, even though they despise the Lord’s word. However, the Lord had already decreed destruction.
Summary for Jer 23:18-19: 23:18-19 ^ae These prophets invented their messages (23:16 ^af); they had never been in the Lord’s presence, and none of them cared enough to listen to God’s instruction.
Summary for Jer 23:19-20: 23:19-20 ^ag Contrary to the lies of the false prophets, the world was facing the storm of the Lord’s anger. The political situation was a whirlwind that would soon strike the wicked. The Lord had planned this punishment and would ensure that it took place. After the war, the survivors would look back and see that Jeremiah had prophesied correctly.
Summary for Jer 23:21-24: 23:21-24 ^ah In this stanza, the Lord expressed his keen disappointment and disgust toward the false prophets.
23:22 ^ai The messages of the false prophets would have been quite different if they had actually come from the Lord. God wanted the people to reject their evil ways (such as Baal worship) and turn to the one true God.
Summary for Jer 23:23-24: 23:23-24 ^aj The Lord revealed the difference between himself and the Canaanite nature deities. The pagan deities were close at hand, as part of nature. The Lord was close at hand because he created all nature, but he was also far away in his distinction from it. His essence is different from nature, yet he is present in all the heavens and earth.
Summary for Jer 23:25-27: 23:25-27 ^ak The false prophets placed a high value on dreams. The claim to have had a dream supposedly gave authority to a prophet’s message. However, these prophets were inventing everything they said in order to lead the people away from the Lord.
23:28 ^al The Lord temporarily allowed the false prophets to tell their dreams. At the same time, the Lord had his true messengers, such as Jeremiah, to proclaim his every word. This allowed the people to see the difference between the useless dreams of the false prophets (straw) and the nourishing words of the Lord’s messengers (grain); cp. Ps 1:3-4 ^am.
23:29 ^an The Lord’s word has power, like fire, to destroy false prophecies. It would smash the seemingly impregnable fortress of Jerusalem like a mighty hammer.
Summary for Jer 23:30-32: 23:30-32 ^ao The Lord rebuked and opposed the prophets who spoke lies in his name.
Summary for Jer 23:33-40: 23:33-40 ^ap The Lord presented a hypothetical conversation to show Jeremiah how to handle the false prophets. 23:33 ^aq These false prophets might taunt Jeremiah by asking for the latest message the Lord had burdened him with.

• You are the burden! This is a wordplay—it was common for a prophetic message to be called “a burden.” The false prophets were a heavy load that the Lord would throw off and abandon.
Summary for Jer 23:34-35: 23:34-35 ^ar Someone might falsely brag that he had heard a prophecy from the Lord. However, such a person and his entire family would be punished (cp. Num 16:27-32 ^as; Josh 7:24-25 ^at).
23:36 ^au The Lord warned that no one should claim to have a prophecy from the Lord in order to exert authority over other people. Doing so would be contrary to God’s words and constitute a misuse of his name (Exod 20:7 ^av; see also Matt 20:25-28 ^aw).
Summary for Jer 23:37-40: 23:37-40 ^ax What is the Lord saying? The Lord had decreed that he would punish the people of Judah and expel false prophets. Any prophecy that stated otherwise was not a prophecy from the Lord.
23:40 ^ay The false prophets would be an object of ridicule. Their predictions would be proved false when Jerusalem was destroyed and the people of the city were taken into exile.