Jeremiah 27:1-7 - I made the earth and the people

27:1-3

Various envoys were in Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was to send a message back to the nations that they represented, namely Edom, Moab and Ammon. The message was to be presented in a dramatic fashion, with Jeremiah wearing a yoke. We see that God uses a variety of ways of communicating His word.

27:4-7

“With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and all its people and animals”. This is such an important and fundamental statement. We are created beings in a created universe. “And I give it to anyone I please”. God is God, and when we forget that our thinking becomes increasingly futile and distorted. So now He was going to give all the nations of verse3 to Nebuchadnezzar. All nations would be given to Babylon, but then Babylon would become subject to many nations and great kings. As a point of Biblical interpretation, in v7 when it says “all nations will serve him” it quite clearly means all nations in the region. It would be quite silly to claim this means literally all nations on earth. So when people make this sort of argument for claiming the flood literally covered the whole earth I think we need to be a little careful. The flood may well have been literally worldwide, but it is not obvious that it is not just a regional flooding.