John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 29:1

"Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders of the captivity, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon," — Jeremiah 29:1 (ASV)

Here the Prophet begins a new discourse, namely that he not only cried out constantly in Jerusalem, urging the Jews who still remained there to repent, but that he also mitigated the grief of the exiles and exhorted them to hold onto the hope of returning, provided they patiently endured the chastisement allotted to them.

The Prophet's purpose was at the same time twofold: he not only intended to mitigate the sorrow of the exiles with comfort, but also aimed to break down the obstinacy of his own nation, so that those who still remained in Jerusalem and Judea might know that nothing would be better for them than to join their other brothers.

The Jews, as has already been seen and as we will see later in many places, had set their minds on an unreasonable deliverance. God had decreed seventy years, but they wished to immediately break free and extricate themselves from the yoke laid on them. Therefore, Jeremiah, in writing to the captives and exiles, intended to adapt his message for the Jews who still remained in Jerusalem, who considered their situation very fortunate because they were not driven away with their king and the rest of the multitude.

But at the same time, his aim was also to benefit the miserable exiles, who might have been overwhelmed with despair if their grief had not been mitigated to some extent. The Prophet, as we will see, instructs them to look forward to the end of their captivity. In the meantime, he exhorts them to patience and urges them to be quiet and peaceable, and not to cause disturbances, until God's hand acted for their deliverance.

He says that he wrote a book to the remaining elders; for many of that age group had died. As is natural, the old who are approaching the end of life die first. He then says that he wrote to those who still remained alive. From this we conclude that his prophecy was intended for all of them. And yet he afterwards says, “Take wives and propagate;” but this, as we will see, applies to those who were then of a suitable age for marriage. However, he did not wish to exclude the elderly from the comfort God intended them to share, namely, by knowing that there would be a happy end to their captivity, provided they maintained resignation of mind and patiently bore God's punishment, which was justly due to them for having provoked Him so often and in so many ways. Then he adds, the priests, and the prophets, and then the whole people.

But we must notice that he not only exhorts the people to patience, but also the priests and the prophets. And though, as we will see later, there were impostors among them who falsely boasted that they were prophets, it is still probable that those who were endowed with God’s Spirit are also included here, either because the spirit was languid in them, or because God did not always grant them knowledge of everything. It might then be that the prophets—to whom God had not revealed this, or whose minds were oppressed by troubles—needed to be taught.

Regarding the priests, we therefore conclude that they had neglected their office from the beginning, for they would have been God’s prophets if they had faithfully performed their priestly office. It was, so to speak, an extraordinary thing when God chose other prophets, and not without reproach to the priests. For they must have become degenerate and idle or deceptive, glorying in the name alone while they were destitute of the truth. This, then, was the reason they needed to be taught along with the people.