Book of Jeremiah Chapter 44 Summary

"Those Who Fail To Learn Lessons from History Are Doomed to Repeat Them"

  • God continues to reprimand the Judeans who fled to Egypt. He tells them that they've seen what happened to Judah for being disobedient and failing to listen to the prophets.
  • He asks them why they're abandoning their homeland, leaving Judah without a remnant of its people. And now they're worshipping Egypt's gods and refusing to learn any lessons from how their ancestors and contemporary Hebrews were punished.
  • No one seems to get it.
  • It gets worse: the people who've been worshipping the Egyptian gods say that the disasters that have befallen them are because they've stopped worshipping a great goddess, the "queen of heaven."
  • Jeremiah tells them that the opposite is true: God punished Judah for worshipping other gods in the first place. This is the problem, not the solution.
  • Jeremiah relays another message from God: he says, fine—go ahead and keep worshipping the "queen of heaven."
  • But God swears on his own great name that none of the Judeans left in Egypt will ever remember God's name or call on him.
  • God will make sure that a terrible fate befalls them: they'll all die by war and famine. And he'll have Pharaoh Hophra get captured by the Babylonians just as he'd allowed them to capture King Zedekiah. So there.