Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 24

The Lord showed me ... —The chapter belongs to the same period as the two preceding, that is, to the reign of Zedekiah, after the first capture of Jerusalem and the captivity of the chief inhabitants. The opening words indicate that the symbols on which the prophet looked were seen in vision, as in Amos 7:1-4; Amos 7:7; Zechariah 1:8; Zechariah 2:1, and the symbols of Jeremiah 1:11; Jeremiah 1:13; or, if seen with the eyes of the body, were looked on as with the prophet-poet’s power of finding parables in all things.

The fact that the figs were set before the Temple of the Lord is significant. They were as a votive offering, first-fruits (Exodus 23:19; Deuteronomy 26:2) or tithes brought to the Lord of Israel. Similar imagery had been used by Amos (Amos 8:1–2) with nearly the same formulas.

The carpenters and smiths. —See 2 Kings 24:14. The word for “carpenters” includes craftsmen of all kinds. The deportation of these classes was partly a matter of policy, making the city more helpless by removing those who might have forged weapons or strengthened its defences; partly, doubtless, for ostentation, so that they might help in the construction of the buildings with which Nebuchadnezzar was increasing the splendour of his city. So Esarhaddon records how he made his captives “work in fetters, in making bricks” (Records of the Past, iii., p. 120).

So, from the former point of view, the Philistines in the time of Samuel either carried off the smiths of Israel or forbade the exercise of their calling (1 Samuel 13:19). The word for “smith” is found in Isaiah 24:22 and Isaiah 42:7 in the sense of “prison,” but, as applied to persons, it is found only here and in the parallel passages of 2 Kings 24:14 and 2 Kings 24:16. It has been differently interpreted as meaning “locksmiths,” “gatekeepers,” “strangers,” “hod-carriers,” and “day-labourers.” Probably the rendering of the English Version is right.

Like the figs that are first ripe. —Figs were usually gathered in August. The “first ripe,” the “summer fruits” of Micah 7:1, the “hasty fruit before the summer” (Isaiah 28:4; Hosea 9:10) were looked upon as a choice delicacy.

The “naughty” (i.e., worthless) fruits were those that had been left behind on the tree, bruised and decayed.

The word “naughty” was not confined in the 16th century to the language of the nursery and was applied freely to things as well as persons. So, North’s translation of Plutarch speaks of men “fighting on naughty ground.”

“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

SHAKESPEARE, Merchant of Venice, v. 1.

What do you see, Jeremiah? —The question is asked as if to force the symbol as strongly as possible on the prophet’s mind, leaving him to wait until another word of the Lord should come and reveal its true interpretation. We are reminded, as he must have been, of the vision and the question which had first called him to his work as a prophet (Jeremiah 1:11).

Again the word of the Lord came unto me. —The words seem to imply an interval, during which the prophet was left to ponder over the symbols that he had seen in this way. At last the word of the Lord came and made their meaning clear.

So will I acknowledge. — The expected revelation came. The two baskets represented the two sections of the people.

The captives who had been carried to Babylon were, as the list shows, for the most part of higher rank than those who were left behind. The workmen were the skilled labourers of the artisan class.

There are many indications that under the teaching of Daniel and his companions, and of Ezekiel, they were improving morally under their discipline of suffering. Their very contact with the monstrous idolatry of Babylon made them more conscious than they had ever been before of the greatness of their own faith. The process which, at the end of the seventy years of exile, made them once more and forever a purely monotheistic people had already begun.