Jeremiah 43
Devotional by Pastor Lawrence

Even though Johanan and his men swore to listen to the prophet Jeremiah and do whatever the Lord had told them to do that it might go well with them when they obeyed the voice of the Lord, they did not keep their promise. Because they did not believe that the Lord would protect them from the wrath of King Nebuchadnezzar, they refused to stay in Israel as the Lord had commanded them, even accusing Jeremiah and Baruch of telling them lies. Instead they gathered all the remnant of Judah who had come under the protection of the slain governor Gedaliah including many men, women and children, in addition to some of the princesses of Judah, and even Jeremiah and Baruch against their will, and took them with them to the land of Egypt arriving at the northern city of Tahpanhes.

Tahpanhes was a cosmopolitan city with a great number Greeks and Jews already living there. It was also the location of the Pharaoh’s northern palace on the Suez Canal, so it offered a strong sense of security and comfortability that the Jews did not have in what was now a wasteland in Judah. But just when the Jews had gotten situated and felt comfortable living abroad in the land of Egypt, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah telling him to take some large stones in full view of the Jews, and hide them in the mortar of the pavement that was at the entrance to Pharaoh Hophra’s palace, and then say publicly, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will set his throne above these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his royal canopy over them.”

Not too long ago, the brickwork for this pavement was recently discovered in Egypt, so if you want to go and see where Jeremiah stood on that particular day you still can. We don’t exactly know when the Jews made the journey to Egypt, but it would have been after 587-6 BC when Jerusalem was destroyed. There are at least two times that Nebuchadnezzar is said to have attacked Egypt after that date. First in 582 BC and then later on in 568-7 BC when the Egyptians finally repulsed the Babylonians and sent them packing. More than likely, it was the former date that served as the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy, so it wasn’t long before the Jews would suffer the punishment that the Lord had promised.
During his invasion, Nebuchadnezzar set up his temporary throne in Tahpanhes under a canopy on that brickwork as a rival to the Pharaoh’s rule further south. And during the siege itself, some of the Jews died of pestilence, others died from the sword, and still others were taken captive back to Babylon. And before Nebuchadnezzar left the city in Tahpanhes, he burned all the temples of the gods of Egypt and carried away their idols of gold. He also broke down all the proud monuments of the Egyptians, the ornate obelisks dedicated to their king, the sun god.

Thus, everything Johanan and his men were seeking to avoid in Israel happened to them in Egypt instead. Everything they had put their hopes in had crumbled to the ground. The gods of Egypt could not protect them from the indignation of the Lord and his servant of wrath Nebuchadnezzar II. These events flesh out Proverbs 16:25 in such a tragic way. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”