Jeremiah 28:12

GOD GAVE THE ANSWER; VINDICATING JEREMIAH

"Then the word of Jehovah came to Jeremiah, after that Hananiah the prophet had broken the bar off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Go, and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah: Thou hast broken the bars of wood; but thou hast made in their stead bars of iron. For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all the nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have given him the beasts of the field also. Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah: Jehovah hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will send thee away from the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast spoken rebellion against Jehovah. So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month."

"Bars of wood ... bars of iron ..." (Jeremiah 28:13). The meaning here is that the Babylonian disaster coming upon the nations would be even worse after the rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, which, of course, was finally led by Zedekiah. For Judah, it resulted in the second great siege of Jerusalem, the absolute and total destruction of the temple, and the removal of many more captives to Babylon.

"Jehovah hath not sent thee... I will send thee away from the face of the earth ..." (Jeremiah 28:15,16). There is a play upon the words here. Jehovah had indeed not "sent" Hananiah with his false prophecy, but God here promised that he would indeed be "sent" away from the face of the earth. This was a clear prophecy of the death of Hananiah; but God spelled it out for him, "this year thou shalt die."

"Because thou hast spoken rebellion against Jehovah ..." (Jeremiah 28:16). This is very similar to countless other statements throughout the Bible. Note that the sentence of death here announced against Hananiah, "Accords perfectly with Deuteronomy 18:20 which declares that to prophesy falsely in the name of Jehovah, as Hananiah had done, was to commit a capital offense."[18] This is only another example of the innumerable instances in which the discernible shadow of the Pentateuch lies over every single subsequent word in the holy Bible. As Harrison pointed out, this sudden death of Hananiah is similar to the deaths of "Pelatiah (Ezekiel 11:13) and Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11)."[19]

Most current commentators treat this and the preceding two chapters as a single unit, which indeed they are; but we prefer to deal with all of these chapters as units in their own right.