Jeremiah 28 Study Notes

28:1-17 The phrase in that same year places the incident in this chapter not long after the events in chap. 27.

28:1 Hananiah son of Azzur, whom the LXX calls a “false prophet,” was a native of Gibeon, a city of priests five miles northwest of Jerusalem (modern el-Jib). He publicly contradicted Jeremiah’s prophecy about the yoke (chap. 27).

28:2 I have broken the yoke refers to the prophecy Jeremiah had just delivered in chap. 27. Hananiah had the audacity to use the same introductory formula for a divine message that God had given Jeremiah, his genuine prophet.

28:3 Within two years, Hananiah predicted, everything would be restored. Such specificity must have made him look credible, but when his prophecy failed, he deserved the penalty prescribed in Dt 18:21-22.

28:4 Jeconiah is another name for King Jehoiachin of Judah (27:20).

28:5-6 Jeremiah responded to Hananiah’s brazen prediction with an Amen! Whether he did so sarcastically or because he was thrown off balance since Hananiah’s prophecy disputed everything God had shown him up to this point, we cannot say for sure.

28:7-9 Jeremiah reminded Hananiah that the prophets who had preceded them spoke of war, disaster, and plague. Prophets who prophesied peace had to show they were genuine by the fulfillment of their words (Dt 13:1-5; 18:15-22). So Hananiah was running against the grain not only of Jeremiah’s words but of the messages of all the prophets from the past.

28:10-11 By opposing the word of the Lord, Hananiah had allied himself with the serpent in the garden of Eden.

28:12-14 The Lord told Jeremiah to make an iron yoke bar because Hananiah had made Jeremiah’s word about God’s judgment all the more certain and hardened.

28:15-17 In another wordplay the Lord declared that since he had not sent Hananiah to prophesy, he would send him off the face of the earth. Two months later Hananiah died. We are not told how this happened or if God caused his death, but the reason for his death is that he had preached rebellion against the Lord (see Dt 13:5).