The two baskets of figs
1 Yahweh showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the Tem ple. It was after Nebu chadnezzar, king of Babylon had deported Jekoniah, son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah together with the princes of Judah, the blacksmiths and metalworkers and had taken them to Babylon.
2 One of the baskets had choice figs that ripen early, the other had bad ones, so bad that they couldn’t be eaten.
3 Yah weh said to me, “What do you see Jere miah?” I replied, “Figs. The good figs are excellent but the bad figs are so rotten they cannot be eaten!”
4 So the word of Yahweh came to me:
5 “Just as these figs are good, so do I consider good those who have been deported from Judah to the land of the Chal deans.
6 I will look kindly on them and bring them back to this land. I will restore and not destroy them, I will plant and not uproot them.
7 I will dispose their heart to know me as Yahweh. They will be my people and I will be their God for they will come back to me with all their heart.
8 “But as far as King Zedekiah of Judah is concerned, I will deal with him as one deals with rotten figs – so rotten they cannot be eaten. I will likewise deal with his princes and the remnants of Jerusalem – those who have stayed in the country and those who have migrated to Egypt.
9 I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, an object of ridicule, a curse in all the countries to which I will drive them.
10 I will also bring sword, famine and plague upon them until they are utterly erased from the land I gave to them and to their ancestors.
------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Jeremiah, Chapter 24
• 24.1 The first siege of Jerusalem occurred in 598, along with the capitulation of king Jehoiakin, and a first exile. In the ten years that followed, the new king Zedekiah along with the people who remained, acted as if nothing had happened. Though they were defeated and poor, the people of Jerusalem came to think that they were better off and that they only had to lament over the fate of those in exile. Jeremiah rejects this opinion. God is interested in those in exile for they are the begin ning of the future renewed people. On the other hand, something worse is going to happen to those re maining in Jerusalem.