The Good Figs of God's Gracious Exile Text: Jeremiah 24:4-7
Introduction: The Severe Mercy of God
We live in a sentimental age, an age that prefers a God who is always nice but never good. We want a God who strokes our hair, not one who breaks our bones in order to set them properly. But the God of Scripture, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a surgeon, and sometimes His mercy feels severe. The book of Jeremiah is a sustained education in this severe mercy. The prophet is called to a heartbreaking task: to tell God's covenant people that the covenant curses they had been warned about for centuries were no longer waiting at the door. The door was down, and the curses were in the house.
The historical situation is bleak. Nebuchadnezzar has already come and carted off the top tier of Judean society to Babylon, King Jeconiah and the best of the craftsmen and warriors among them. Left behind in Jerusalem are the dregs, the political schemers under the puppet king Zedekiah, who foolishly believe that their remaining in the land is a sign of God's favor. They look at the exiles in Babylon with contempt, as though they were the ones God had rejected. It is in this context of profound spiritual blindness that God gives Jeremiah a vision of two baskets of figs. One basket is full of rotten, inedible figs, and the other is full of choice, first-ripe figs. We would naturally assume the ones left in the promised land were the good figs. But God's evaluations are not our evaluations. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
This passage is a powerful lesson in divine paradox. God declares that the exiles, the ones who have lost everything, are the good figs. And those who remain, clinging to the temple and the land while their hearts are far from God, are the bad figs, destined for utter destruction. This teaches us that God's blessing is not always found in circumstances of comfort and ease. Sometimes, the deepest work of His grace is accomplished in the furnace of affliction, in the disorienting reality of exile. God's purpose was not to destroy His people, but to refine them. He sent them into the pagan heartland of Babylon in order to save them from the paganism in their own hearts. He was a short-term pessimist in order to be a long-term optimist. Judgment was the necessary prelude to restoration.
The Text
Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, "Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will recognize as good the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans. For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will return them to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am Yahweh; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.’"
(Jeremiah 24:4-7 LSB)
God's Sovereign Re-Evaluation (v. 4-5)
The prophecy begins with the authority of God and a complete reversal of human judgment.
"Then the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, 'Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Like these good figs, so I will recognize as good the exiles of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans.'" (Jeremiah 24:4-5)
Notice first who is speaking: "Yahweh, the God of Israel." This is the covenant God, the one who brought them out of Egypt, who made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has not forgotten His covenant, even when His people have. His judgment is not the act of an arbitrary deity in a rage; it is the faithful action of a covenant Lord. He is keeping His word, the curses right along with the blessings.
And His evaluation turns the world upside down. He will "recognize as good" the exiles. The word for recognize here means to know, to acknowledge, to treat as. God is making a sovereign declaration. These are the ones I am preserving. These are the ones I have my eye on. It is God's evaluation that matters, not the court of public opinion in Jerusalem. The exiles felt ashamed, defeated, and rejected. But God says, "No, you are the good figs."
But the most potent phrase here is this: "whom I have sent." God takes full responsibility. The Babylonians were God's instrument. Nebuchadnezzar was God's servant (Jeremiah 25:9). This was not a geopolitical accident. This was not a failure of God's plan. This was the plan. God Himself sent them into the land of the Chaldeans. Why? For their good. This is a radical assertion of divine sovereignty. God's people were not victims of circumstance; they were subjects of a divine, and gracious, deportation. He was tearing them away from the diseased vine in Jerusalem so that He could replant them later in good soil. This is the hard but necessary lesson: sometimes the most gracious thing God can do is to send us into exile from the things we idolize, even good things like the land and the temple.
The Promise of Restoration (v. 6)
Verse 6 unfolds the positive purpose behind this severe act of sending them away. This is not punitive in the final sense; it is restorative.
"For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will return them to this land; and I will build them up and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not uproot them." (Jeremiah 24:6 LSB)
Here we see the heart of our long-term optimist God. "I will set My eyes on them for good." While the remnant in Judah was under God's gaze for judgment, the exiles were under His gaze for preservation. God's providence is never generic. It is particular. He had a plan for Daniel, for Ezekiel, for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He was watching over them in Babylon.
And the goal is explicit: restoration. "I will return them to this land." This is the promise that gives hope in the midst of despair. But it is more than just a geographic return. The language here is the language of creation and covenant. "I will build them up... I will plant them." This is what God does. He is a builder, a planter. Sin pulls down and uproots. Grace builds and plants. The contrast is absolute: "and not pull them down... and not uproot them." God is promising a permanent, secure restoration. This promise finds its initial fulfillment in the return under Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. But like all Old Testament promises, it is a signpost pointing to a much greater reality.
This is the grammar of the gospel. God's ultimate plan is always building, always planting. This is the foundation of a robust, optimistic, postmillennial eschatology. God's program for history is not one of managed decline until He has to hit the big red evacuation button. His program is to build His church, to plant His kingdom, and to see it grow until it fills the earth. The exile and return of Judah is a miniature model of the death and resurrection of Christ. Through the ultimate exile of the cross, God brings about the ultimate restoration, building a new humanity, a spiritual temple, and planting a garden that will cover the whole world.
The Heart of the Matter (v. 7)
Verse 7 gets to the absolute center of the problem and the glorious, unilateral nature of the solution. Why did they need to be exiled in the first place? Because of their hearts. And so, the ultimate promise is not a new land, but a new heart.
"I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am Yahweh; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart." (Jeremiah 24:7 LSB)
This is the New Covenant promise in embryonic form, which Jeremiah will state in its full glory in chapter 31. The problem was never with God's law; the problem was with man's heart of stone. And God's solution is not to give them more laws, or better circumstances, but to perform a divine heart transplant. "I will give them a heart." Notice the divine initiative. He does not say, "I will reward them when they develop a heart to know me." He says, "I will give" it to them. This is the doctrine of regeneration. It is a sovereign, gracious, unilateral act of God. God does not wait for us to turn our hearts to Him; He turns our hearts to Him. He gives us what He requires of us.
And what is the nature of this new heart? It is "a heart to know Me." This is not mere intellectual data about God. The word "know" in Hebrew implies intimate, personal, covenantal relationship. It is the knowledge of a wife for her husband, of a son for his father. God was going to bring them into a saving, personal relationship with Himself. This is the essence of eternal life (John 17:3).
The result is the restoration of the covenant formula in its deepest sense: "they will be My people, and I will be their God." This relationship had been broken by their spiritual adultery, but God Himself will repair it. And the evidence of this new, God-given heart is a new, whole-hearted response: "for they will return to Me with their whole heart." True repentance is not something we manufacture to get God to act. True repentance is the result of God having already acted within us. The return with the whole heart is the guaranteed fruit of the heart He gives. Grace is the cause; our response is the effect. God plants the good tree, and it necessarily brings forth good fruit.
Conclusion: The Good Figs of the New Covenant
This passage is a profound comfort and a sober warning. The comfort is for those who find themselves in a place of exile, in hardship or affliction. If you belong to Christ, know that God has sent you there. His eyes are on you for good. He is not pulling you down, but preparing to build. He is not uprooting you, but pruning you so that you might bear more fruit. The purpose of your trial is not your destruction, but your restoration.
The warning is for those who mistake external privilege for internal reality. The Jews in Jerusalem had the temple, the city, the land. They had all the religious furniture. But their hearts were rotten. They were the bad figs. It is possible to be in the right place, surrounded by all the blessings of the visible church, and yet be spiritually inedible, destined for the trash heap. The question is not, "Are my circumstances comfortable?" but rather, "Has God given me a new heart?"
Ultimately, Jesus Christ is the true and good fig from Judah. He was the ultimate exile, sent out from the Father's presence, bearing our sin and curse. He was taken into the land of the Chaldeans, as it were, into the darkness of the grave. But God's eyes were on Him for good. And God built Him up, raising Him from the dead, and planted Him as the firstfruits of a new creation. And now, through faith in Him, God performs that promised heart surgery on us. He takes out our stony, rebellious, rotten hearts and gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh that knows Him, loves Him, and desires to obey Him. He makes us His people, and He becomes our God. And that is a promise far sweeter than the best of figs.