Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 28

And it came to pass the same year ...— The chapter stands in immediate sequence with the one that precedes it and confirms the conclusion that the name Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 27:1 is simply a transcriber’s mistake. Of Hananiah, who appears as the most prominent of the prophet’s adversaries, we know nothing beyond what is recorded here. He was clearly one of the leaders of the party of resistance whom we have seen at work, trying to form an alliance with the neighboring nations in Jeremiah 27, and whose hopes had been revived by the accession of Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) to the throne of Egypt in 595 B.C.

The mention of Gibeon suggests two or three thoughts that are not without interest:

1. It was, like Anathoth, within the tribe of Benjamin, about six or seven miles from Jerusalem, and so the antagonism between the true prophet and the false in Jerusalem may have been the revival of older local conflicts.
2. Gibeon, like Anathoth, was one of the cities of priests (Joshua 21:17), and Hananiah was probably, therefore, a priest as well as a prophet.
3. While still retaining the venerable relics of a worship that had passed away, it had also once been the sanctuary of Jehovah (1 Chronicles 16:39).

There the old tabernacle stood, which had been with the people in the wilderness—which had been removed from Shiloh when the sacred ark was taken (2 Chronicles 1:3). There Solomon, at the beginning of his reign, offered a stately sacrifice (1 Kings 3:4). Should not the prophet who had grown up in the midst of those surroundings have learned that no place, however sacred, could count on being safe from the changes and chances of time, all fulfilling the righteous purposes of God? The occasion on which he now appears was probably one of the new moon, Sabbath, or other feast-days on which the courts of the Temple were crowded.

I have broken the yoke ... —The word is obviously used with special reference to the symbol which Jeremiah had made so conspicuous (Jeremiah 27:2). With some ironical repetition, it may be, he reproduces the very formula with which the true prophet had begun his message. He, too, can speak in the name of the Lord of Sabaoth, the God of Israel.

Within two full years. —Literally, two years of days. Hananiah, not deterred by the previous warnings of Jeremiah, becomes bolder in the definiteness of his prediction. The conspiracy of Judah and the neighboring states against Nebuchadnezzar was clearly ripening, and he looked on its success as certain. Prediction stood against prediction, and, as there were no signs or wonders performed, people had to judge from what they knew of the lives of the men who uttered them which of them was most worthy of credit. The contest between the two prophets reminds us of Deuteronomy 18:20-22.

And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim ... —We get here a new glimpse into the nature of the anti-Chaldean confederacy. Zedekiah was to be deposed as too submissive to Nebuchadnezzar, and the young Jeconiah was to be brought back from his prison at Babylon, and re-established in the kingdom as the representative of the policy of resistance, resting on the support of Pharaoh-Hophra.

Amen, the Lord do so. —It is impossible to mistake the tone of keen, incisive irony with which the words were spoken. The speaker could, without falsehood, echo the wish as far as it was a wish, but he knew that it was a wish for the impossible. The whole condition of things would have to be altered before there could be the slightest prospect of its fulfilment. It was not wise to pray for what was obviously out of the lines of God’s normal methods of working in history, and against His purpose, as uttered by His prophets.