Introduction
We have seen the many prophecies of Jeremiah throughout his book but this chapter is believed to be his final prophecy, that is, chronologically speaking. It seems that right up to the very end of his life. We don’t know the exact date of this writing but we know that it came after the events we have just dealt with in Jeremiah 43. We know this because we are told here that the remnant was living in various cities of Egypt, which seems to indicate that they had been in Egypt for some time.
A suggested outline of this chapter would be as follows.
1. Jeremiah warned them that their fate would be the same as that of Jerusalem’s if they disobeyed, Jeremiah 44:1-7.
2. Worshipping idols would destroy them, Jeremiah 44:8-10.
3. Sword, Famine and Plague, your reward, Jeremiah 44:11-14.
4. We will worship the Queen of Heaven, Jeremiah 44:15-19.
5. Jeremiah warns of punishment for their false reasons, Jeremiah 44:20-23.
6. God will keep His word, Jeremiah 44:24-30.
DISASTER BECAUSE OF IDOLATRY
‘This word came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews living in Lower Egypt—in Migdol, Tahpanhes and Memphis— and in Upper Egypt: ‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You saw the great disaster I brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Today they lie deserted and in ruins because of the evil they have done. They aroused my anger by burning incense to and worshiping other gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever knew. Again, and again I sent my servants the prophets, who said, ‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!’ But they did not listen or pay attention; they did not turn from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods. Therefore, my fierce anger was poured out; it raged against the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem and made them the desolate ruins they are today.’ Jeremiah 44:1-6
These verses recap the recent events concerning Judah. Jeremiah received word from God in Migdol, Jeremiah 44:1, which is a Canaanite term meaning tower or fortress. The proper name of the city is Magdala, which is mentioned in the Tel El Amana tablets. Pathros was the designation of upper or lower Egypt, Jeremiah 44:1. Jeremiah gives an overall view of the previous and present rebellions of the people, the remnant, against God.
Surely, they could not fall to see the consequences of their behaviour? Jeremiah 44:2-3. They are also warned against committing the same awful sin of idol worship, as their forefathers did, Jeremiah 44:3. God sent His servants the prophets, who told them not to do this detestable thing that God hates, Jeremiah 44:4. He warns them to repent and turn back to God, Jeremiah 44:5, and He reminds them of what happened to Jerusalem and the surrounding towns in Judah, Jeremiah 44:6. Punishment will be severe if they don’t obey God’s commands.
Coffman, in his commentary, says the following.
‘Jeremiah had prophesied that this desolation would overtake Jerusalem, Jeremiah 24:8-10, and that fact should have conditioned some of the people, at least, to believe the prophet, but it did not.’
‘Now this is what the LORD God Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Why bring such great disaster on yourselves by cutting off from Judah the men and women, the children, and infants, and so leave yourselves without a remnant? Why arouse my anger with what your hands have made, burning incense to other gods in Egypt, where you have come to live? You will destroy yourselves and make yourselves a curse and an object of reproach among all the nations on earth. Have you forgotten the wickedness committed by your ancestors and by the kings and queens of Judah and the wickedness committed by you and your wives in the land of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? To this day they have not humbled themselves or shown reverence, nor have they followed my law and the decrees I set before you and your ancestors. ‘Therefore, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: I am determined to bring disaster on you and to destroy all Judah. I will take away the remnant of Judah who were determined to go to Egypt to settle there. They will all perish in Egypt; they will fall by the sword or die from famine. From the least to the greatest, they will die by sword or famine. They will become a curse and an object of horror, a curse, and an object of reproach. I will punish those who live in Egypt with the sword, famine, and plague, as I punished Jerusalem. None of the remnant of Judah who have gone to live in Egypt will escape or survive to return to the land of Judah, to which they long to return and live; none will return except a few fugitives.’ Jeremiah 44:7-14
God asks them why are they harming themselves? Why are they bringing great disaster on themselves by cutting off from Judah the men and women, the children, and infants, and so leave themselves without a remnant? Jeremiah 44:7. God asks why arouse His anger with what their hands have made, burning incense to other gods in Egypt, where they have come to live? Jeremiah 44:8.
God says they will destroy themselves and make themselves a curse and an object of reproach among all the nations on earth, Jeremiah 44:8. I’m sure you notice that everything that is happening is self-inflicted but it didn’t have to be this way.
Have they forgotten that God punished His people back home for doing the very same things that they are now doing? Jeremiah 44:9. The mention of the queens of Judah, Jeremiah 44:9, reminds us of the queens of Solomon, who worshipped pagan temples for themselves, and led Solomon to worship them. Jeremiah compares the wickedness of the queens of Judah and the wickedness of the ordinary wives back in their homeland, Jeremiah 44:9. They haven’t humbled themselves or shown reverence, nor have they followed God’s law and the decrees He set before them and their ancestors, Jeremiah 44:10.
God is determined to bring disaster on them and to destroy all Judah, Jeremiah 44:10, and He says the remnant will perish, Jeremiah 44:12-13, and there will only be a handful of survivors, Jeremiah 44:14. These verses warn the people, that they will have no part in the future plans of God. The future of God’s people will rest with the remnant that returns from Babylon, not with the remnant in Egypt. They may still be dreaming of returning to Judah but they will die in Egypt.
‘Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, ‘We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time, we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.’ The women added, ‘When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes impressed with her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?’ Jeremiah 44:15-19
As soon as they entered the land, they were embracing the gods of Egypt, Jeremiah 44:15. As I’ve already said, it was the women who were the main culprits and they encouraged their men to offer drink offerings and to burn incense, Jeremiah 44:15. They tell Jeremiah that they won’t listen to him, Jeremiah 44:16, and they will carry on practicing idolatry towards the Queen of Heaven, Jeremiah 44:17.
WHO WAS THIS QUEEN OF HEAVEN?
She has been identified with many female goddesses, such as Ashtaroth, Ishtar, Venus, and Aphrodite. She was considered to be the goddess of fertility, the female equivalent of Baal. There was absolutely no reason for God’s people to be worshipping a sex goddess instead of worshipping God Himself.
It was obviously, the kind of sexual pleasures they achieved from this that attracted them to this kind of worship. A similar problem is clearly shown in Numbers 25, where God’s people preferred this kind of worship to that commanded by God.
Coffman, in his commentary, says the following.
‘The Israelites turned to the worship of the Queen of Heaven as Ashteroth soon after their arrival in Canaan, it was depraved in the extreme; it was rife in the times of Samuel, 1 Samuel 7:3-4, after Saul’s death, his armour was placed in the temple of Ashteroth at Beth-Shan, 1 Samuel 21:10, and Solomon gave it royal sanction, 2 Kings 23:13.’
Like all of these so-called gods, the worship of the Queen of Heaven had connections with astrology. They with the sun, the moon, and the stars. You may recall the words of Stephen in Acts 7:42 when he said, ‘God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies.’ It was to this type of goddess that Stephen was referring to.
They have come to convince themselves that the reason disaster has happened is because when they worshipped the Queen of heaven, everything was good and they had plenty of food, Jeremiah 44:17 / Hosea 2:5. In Jeremiah 44:18, the people claimed that it was only because they had stopped worshipping the Queen of Heaven that all of the problems appeared, they had received nothing but perishing by famine and the sword since they stopped burning incense.
They are probably referring to the reign of the good king, Josiah. whose reforms led to idol worship being stopped. He stopped all of the shameful wickedness prevalent at that time. Now they are claiming that it was the reforms that caused the disaster in Jerusalem and that their worship of idols had done more good for them than God had done. Like the remnant in Egypt, she didn’t realise that all these good things came from God, Hosea 2:5.
In Jeremiah 44:19, the women seem to be saying, don’t think we did all this without our husband’s approval.
Ash, in his commentary, says the following.
‘Vows taken by women, in order to be valid, were required by the Law of Moses to be with their husband’s consent, Numbers 30:7-16.’
Clarke, in his commentary, says the following.
‘The idolatrous worship of these people was a sort of imitation of the worship of the true God; only sacrifice was not common in it. The factious women here tell us in what it consisted of.
1. They burnt incense to the moon, and perhaps to the sun and the planets.
2. They poured out libations to her.
3. They made and consecrated cakes to her.
All these were prescribed in the worship of the true God, Exodus 29:23 / Leviticus 2:4 / Leviticus 23:16 / Numbers 6:15. And the women vindicate their conduct by asserting that they did all this by the consent of their husbands: ‘Did we worship her without our men?’
Despite all the warnings, the remnant carried on in their destructive ways. They thought that IF, as their forefathers had done, they offered to Molech and Ishtar, then food would be plentiful, just as it was in the previous days. Their mistake was in thinking that God okayed this. They did not realise that God allowed them to destroy themselves by their foolish actions.
‘Then Jeremiah said to all the people, both men and women, who were answering him, ‘Did not the LORD remember and call to mind the incense burned in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem by you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials and the people of the land? When the LORD could no longer endure your wicked actions and the detestable things you did, your land became a curse and a desolate waste without inhabitants, as it is today. Because you have burned incense and have sinned against the LORD and have not obeyed him or followed his law or his decrees or his stipulations, this disaster has come upon you, as you now see.’ Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including the women, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah in Egypt. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You and your wives have done what you said you would do when you promised, ‘We will certainly carry out the vows we made to burn incense and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.’ ‘Go ahead then, do what you promised! Keep your vows! But hear the word of the LORD, all you Jews living in Egypt: ‘I swear by my great name,’ says the LORD, ‘that no one from Judah living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name or swear, “As surely as the Sovereign LORD lives.’ For I am watching over them for harm, not for good; the Jews in Egypt will perish by sword and famine until they are all destroyed. Those who escape the sword and return to the land of Judah from Egypt will be very few. Then the whole remnant of Judah who came to live in Egypt will know whose word will stand—mine or theirs. ‘This will be the sign to you that I will punish you in this place,’ declares the LORD, ‘so that you will know that my threats of harm against you will surely stand.’ This is what the LORD says: ‘I am going to deliver Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hands of his enemies who want to kill him, just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the enemy who wanted to kill him.’ Jeremiah 44:20-30
Here we have Jeremiah’s last words to this remnant, Jeremiah 44:20. Jeremiah more or less asks, do you think that all of these people, who worship idols such as the Queen of Heaven, really succeeded because of them? Jeremiah 44:21.
If that is what you believe, think about the land of Judah and the ruin in which you left it! Jeremiah 44:22. God took so much from them and then He punished them, Jeremiah 44:23. He reaffirms his belief that worshipping idols and turning their backs on God were the causes of Judah’s recent downfall. And because they had learnt nothing from this, it would also be the cause of their downfall.
Jeremiah then throws down the challenge to them, carry on your ways if you want to but, if you do, God will surely punish you, Jeremiah 44:24-26. Their end would come about by the overthrow of Pharaoh, Jeremiah 44:27, and captivity was to be the future reward for Egypt as well, Jeremiah 44:28. This will be the sign to them that God will punish them in this place, so that they will know that God’s threats of harm against them will surely stand, Jeremiah 44:29.
God says, He is going to deliver Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hands of his enemies who want to kill him, just as He gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the enemy who wanted to kill him, Jeremiah 44:30.
Isn’t marvellous to see how Jeremiah continues his great work for God? This may be his last message but despite the rebellion of God’s people, Jeremiah remains faithful to the cause. We don’t know if Jeremiah lived long enough to see this prophecy fulfilled.
We do know that he was killed in Egypt by those who hated him. He was killed because he faithfully carried the messages of God to a people who thought that they knew better than him and better than God.