16 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.
Jeremiah 16:1-2, ESV
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.
Jeremiah 29:4-6, ESV
Through the Bible: Jeremiah 14-17
At the beginning of Jeremiah 16, The Lord issues a stark command to His prophet Jeremiah: Don’t get married. Don’t have children.”
The command comes with a qualifier: “In this place.”
This is one of those places where the text demands we ask some questions: What is “this place?” Is the command for Jeremiah alone, or it it for everyone? If it was for Jeremiah alone, did God mean the prophet was never to take a wife?
Context matters, especially when a superficial reading can make it sound like Scripture is contradictory. After all, God’s first command to people was “be fruitful and multiply” (see Genesis 1:28). And later in Jeremiah, God will tell the exiles in Babylon explicitly: take wives. Have sons and daughters (Jeremiah 29:6). So what’s Jeremiah 16 all about?
It would be easy to assume that this was simply because Jeremiah had a difficult calling. Being a prophet was hard enough without the responsibilities of a wife and children, and it may be God didn’t want Jeremiah to have any distractions as he was performing his prophetic ministry.
But in the following verses, God tells Jeremiah why he is not to marry or have children:
“For thus says the LORD concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place . . . They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine” (Jeremiah 16:3–4).
Jeremiah’s singleness wasn’t merely practical. It was prophetic.
His life was to become a living sermon about what was coming to Judah. God was telling him not simply, “Don’t have children.” He was telling him, “Don’t have children in this place.”
Because this place was about to experience judgment. Babylon would invade within a few years, and the people would be carried off into exile. Jerusalem would become desolate. Trying to plant roots in Jerusalem at this point in history would be like rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.
So while the command was given to and through Jeremiah, it was a word for the people of Judah.
But by Jeremiah 29, the first waves of exile have begun. King Jeconiah and many of Jerusalem’s leaders, craftsmen, and citizens have been carried off to Babylon. False prophets such as Hananiah were insisting the exile would be brief– two years, and they would all be back home (see Jeremiah 28:3-11).
Jeremiah sends them a very different message. “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters . . . multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jeremiah 29:5–6).
Did you catch that?
Don’t have children here.
Have children there.
I can almost hear the protests. But, “Jerusalem is home. Babylon is exile. I want my children to be born in Zion.”
But God has a much bigger purpose in mind. Throughout the Bible, there’s a recurring theme of God preserving a people for Himself. He preserved Noah and his family through the flood. He preserved Israel through slavery in Egypt. And now He would preserve His covenant people through seventy years of exile in Babylon. Judgment would come, but judgment would not be the end of the story.
That changes the way I hear one of the most familiar verses in Jeremiah:
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
We often hear that verse as though God were saying, “Hang on. I’m about to get you out of this.” But He had just told them the opposite:
Build houses. Plant gardens. Get married. Have babies. Watch your children have babies of their own.
You are going to be here awhile.
The hope of Jeremiah 29 wasn’t that Babylon would disappear tomorrow. The hope was that Babylon could not stop God from keeping His promises.
If God were merely showing His covenant love to His chosen people, that would be enough. But God has an even bigger purpose in mind. What we thought was God taking the long view turns out to just be the starting point.
Psalm 87 is a song about Zion, the city of God. But in verse 4, God begins naming nations:
“Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush—‘This one was born there,’ they say.”
Then the psalmist says:
“And of Zion it shall be said,
‘This one and that one were born in her’;
for the Most High himself will establish her.
The LORD records as he registers the peoples,
‘This one was born there.’”
(Psalm 87:5–6)
Babylon.
he very place where God’s people had once lived as exiles appears in a psalm envisioning people from the nations being counted as citizens of Zion. Israel’s entire notion of birthright citizenship was being turned on its head. God was looking toward a day when people who had been born in Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Cush could nevertheless be registered by God as though they had been born in Zion.
The New Testament takes that picture even further. Through Christ, those of us who were once “strangers and aliens” have become “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). Paul says that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).
And I am so thankful for that. I have only ever visited Jerusalem as a tourist. But by the grace of God, my name is on the register. I belong to the city of God.
Because our hope has never ultimately depended on where we are. Our hope depends on the God who is already there.
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