The Terrible Mercy of God Text: Jeremiah 34:1-7
Introduction: The God Who Is Not Tame
We modern Christians have a tendency to want a domesticated God. We want a God who fits neatly into our categories, who behaves according to our expectations, and who, above all, is nice. We want a divine grandfather who pats us on the head, not a consuming fire. But the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not a tame lion. He is glorious, sovereign, holy, and His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the hard-edged prophecies of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah’s ministry was to a people who had become experts at ignoring reality. They were covenant people, the people of God, living in the promised land, with the temple in their capital city. And they had come to believe that these things were a talisman, a magical charm that guaranteed their safety regardless of their behavior. They had forsaken the Lord, provoked the Holy One of Israel, and turned away backward. They were steeped in idolatry and injustice. And so God sent them Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, to tell them that the party was over. Judgment was not a distant possibility; it was at the gates. The instrument of that judgment was Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and the message was simple: surrender. Accept the chastisement. Do not make it worse.
This is a message that no true patriot wants to hear. It sounds like treason. And indeed, Jeremiah was treated as a traitor for it. But true loyalty to God’s people sometimes means telling them truths they desperately do not want to hear. The professional prophets, the kept men of the court, were all prophesying peace and safety. They were telling the king what he wanted to hear, which is always a lucrative business. Jeremiah, on the other hand, was telling him what God had said. And what God had to say to Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, was a mixture of terrifying judgment and baffling mercy. It is a word that shows us the absolute sovereignty of God, the certainty of His judgments, and the unexpected shape of His grace.
The Text
The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his military force, with all the kingdoms of the earth that were under his dominion and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and against all its cities, saying, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him: “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire. And you will not escape from his hand, for you will surely be seized and given into his hand; and you will see the king of Babylon eye to eye, and he will speak with you face to face, and you will go to Babylon.’ ” ’ Yet hear the word of Yahweh, O Zedekiah king of Judah! Thus says Yahweh concerning you, ‘You will not die by the sword. You will die in peace; and as spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so they will burn spices for you; and they will lament for you, “Alas, lord!” ’ For I have spoken the word,” declares Yahweh. Then Jeremiah the prophet spoke all these words to Zedekiah king of Judah in Jerusalem when the military force of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah that were left, that is, Lachish and Azekah, for they alone remained as fortified cities among the cities of Judah.
(Jeremiah 34:1-7 LSB)
The Overwhelming Reality (v. 1-2)
The scene is set with an overwhelming display of geopolitical force. This is not a minor border skirmish.
"The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his military force, with all the kingdoms of the earth that were under his dominion and all the peoples, were fighting against Jerusalem and against all its cities, saying, 'Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah and say to him: “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire.'" (Jeremiah 34:1-2)
Look at the description. It is not just Nebuchadnezzar and his army. It is "all the kingdoms of the earth that were under his dominion and all the peoples." This is the ancient world's equivalent of a superpower. This is the hammer of God. Zedekiah is looking out from the walls of Jerusalem and seeing the combined might of the known world arrayed against him. From a human perspective, the situation is hopeless.
But the first thing God does is reframe the situation entirely. The word of Yahweh comes to Jeremiah, and what is the message? It is not, "Look how powerful Nebuchadnezzar is." It is, "Behold, I am giving this city into his hand." God is the one doing this. Nebuchadnezzar is not the ultimate actor here; he is the instrument. He is the axe in the hand of the divine woodsman. This is Yahweh's doing. He is the God of Israel, and He is the one orchestrating the downfall of Israel's capital. Why? Because of generations of covenant unfaithfulness. The curses of Deuteronomy, long threatened, are now arriving.
This is the first principle of biblical sanity. We must see God's sovereign hand in all circumstances, especially the calamitous ones. When we face overwhelming opposition, our first question should not be "How big is the enemy?" but rather "What is God doing?" God is not wringing His hands in heaven, surprised by Babylon's military prowess. He raised Babylon up for this very purpose. This is His judgment, His strange work, and He is utterly in control of it.
The Inescapable Judgment (v. 3)
The prophecy then turns from the fate of the city to the personal fate of the king. There is no escape clause for Zedekiah.
"And you will not escape from his hand, for you will surely be seized and given into his hand; and you will see the king of Babylon eye to eye, and he will speak with you face to face, and you will go to Babylon." (Jeremiah 34:3 LSB)
This is a sentence of absolute certainty. "You will not escape." "You will surely be seized." God removes all wiggle room, all possibility of a last-minute reprieve. Zedekiah had made a covenant with Nebuchadnezzar and then broken it, trusting in Egypt for help. He had rebelled not only against Babylon, but against the God who had placed him under Babylon's authority. And now he must face the man he betrayed.
The language here is striking: "you will see the king of Babylon eye to eye, and he will speak with you face to face." This is a picture of a personal, humiliating reckoning. This is not an anonymous death in the heat of battle. This is a formal, legal, personal confrontation. Zedekiah will be brought before the throne of the earthly king he defied, and he will have to answer for it. This is a picture of what all rebellion against God's ordained authority ultimately leads to: a face-to-face accounting.
And then, "you will go to Babylon." Exile. He will be stripped of his crown, his kingdom, his freedom, and carted off to the land of his enemies. This is the just reward for his rebellion. And we should note, this is precisely what happened. After Jerusalem fell, Zedekiah fled but was captured. His sons were slaughtered before his eyes, and then his own eyes were put out. He was then taken in chains to Babylon, where he died. The prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. God's word does not return to Him void.
The Peculiar Mercy (v. 4-5)
Just when the sentence seems to be one of unmitigated doom, God adds a shocking and unexpected addendum.
"Yet hear the word of Yahweh, O Zedekiah king of Judah! Thus says Yahweh concerning you, ‘You will not die by the sword. You will die in peace; and as spices were burned for your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so they will burn spices for you; and they will lament for you, “Alas, lord!” ’ For I have spoken the word,” declares Yahweh." (Jeremiah 34:4-5 LSB)
What are we to make of this? After the pronouncement of certain capture, humiliation, and exile, God promises him a peaceful death. He will not be executed by the sword, as his sons were. He will die "in peace." More than that, he will be given a royal funeral. The burning of spices was an honor reserved for kings. The people will even offer the traditional lament for a fallen monarch: "Alas, lord!"
This is what I mean by the terrible mercy of God. It is mercy, but it is a strange and severe mercy. He will live out his days as a blind, captive, dethroned king, but he will be spared a violent death. He will be given the honors of a king in his death, though he failed so miserably as a king in his life. This is not a contradiction. It is a demonstration that God's judgments are never simplistic. He is able to weave together both justice and mercy in the same sentence.
Why this mercy? Perhaps it was a small nod to the fact that Zedekiah, for all his weakness and vacillation, did not kill Jeremiah, and occasionally showed the prophet some small kindness. We don't know for certain. But what we do know is that God is free to show mercy to whom He will show mercy. This is not a cheap grace. It is a grace that operates in the midst of, and on the other side of, a terrible judgment. Zedekiah lost everything, but he did not lose his life to the sword. It was a small mercy, but it was a mercy nonetheless, and it came from the hand of God.
The Faithful Prophet (v. 6-7)
The passage concludes with the simple obedience of the prophet and a final, grim note about the state of the war.
"Then Jeremiah the prophet spoke all these words to Zedekiah king of Judah in Jerusalem when the military force of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah that were left, that is, Lachish and Azekah, for they alone remained as fortified cities among the cities of Judah." (Jeremiah 34:6-7 LSB)
Jeremiah did his job. He spoke "all these words" to the king. He did not soften the blow. He did not edit out the hard parts about capture and exile. Nor did he withhold the strange promise of mercy. A faithful prophet is not a creative writer; he is a messenger. He delivers the message he was given, whether it is popular or not, whether it makes sense to him or not.
And the historical note at the end is chilling. The Babylonian army was mopping up. Of all the fortified cities of Judah, only Jerusalem, Lachish, and Azekah remained. The end was not near; it was here. Jeremiah was delivering this prophecy not in a time of peace, but in the final, desperate moments of a losing war. The reality on the ground confirmed the reality of God's word. The historical situation was a visible and tangible amen to the prophetic word.
Conclusion: Facing Our Nebuchadnezzar
The story of Zedekiah is a warning to all who would trifle with God. He was a man who lived in the covenant, heard the word of God from a true prophet, but refused to submit to it. He tried to play his own games, to find his own way out, and the result was ruin, blindness, and exile. His story forces us to ask: what is our Nebuchadnezzar? What is the overwhelming circumstance that God has brought into our lives as a judgment, as a chastisement, as a means of bringing us to the end of ourselves?
It may be a financial crisis. It may be a rebellious child. It may be a failing church. It may be the cultural decay we see all around us. And our temptation, like Zedekiah, is to fight it on our own terms. We look to Egypt, to our political solutions, to our clever strategies, to anything but humble submission to the sovereign hand of God.
The message of Jeremiah is the message of the gospel. The only way up is down. The only way to live is to die. The only way to be saved from the ultimate judgment is to submit to the present chastisement. We must surrender. We must stop fighting God. We must confess that His judgments are true and righteous altogether.
And when we do, we find the same pattern that Zedekiah found, only magnified a million times over in Jesus Christ. We face a judgment far more terrible than meeting Nebuchadnezzar eye to eye. We must face a holy God. And we are promised a mercy far greater than a peaceful death. We are promised resurrection life. Jesus Christ went to Babylon for us. He faced the ultimate judgment on the cross. He saw the face of the ultimate King, His Father, who turned His face away. He died, not in peace, but under the full weight of the curse. And He did it so that we, who deserved the sword, might die in peace and be raised in glory.
Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. Do not be like Zedekiah, who heard but did not heed. Whatever the Babylonian horde is at your gates, know that God has given you into its hand for a purpose. Do not rebel. Do not look to Egypt. Bow the knee. Surrender to His sovereign wisdom. For on the other side of that surrender is not just a small and terrible mercy, but a great and glorious one, purchased by the blood of the Son. For He has spoken the word, and it is finished.