29:4
“To all those I carried into exile ...” Throughout the book of Jeremiah one of the constant themes is that God was carrying out the actions. The underlying cause was not Babylon’s expansionist plans, or imperialistic desire. The underlying cause was God’s judgement on Judah’s sin. At first this may seem like bad news, just as people today think that God saying we have sinned is bad news. Actually it is good news. For God is a God of mercy, and if we submit to the punishment, if we admit our guilt and repent of our ways, then He will forgive us. In Christ He has provided the means to set us free.
29:5,6
We now get the instructions. In short, they were to make the best of it. “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce”. They were to marry and have children. There are some advocate not having children because of environmental concerns, such an approach is not Biblical. There can be a tendency in all of us to just mope. It is OK to have these feelings, but we need to get over it. We should also note that there would come a time when they had to leave Babylon, but for the current season they were to make the best of things. In some ways we can see the exile in Babylon as parallel to our time on this earth. The earth is under judgement (see Genesis 3), we will not be here forever, are not intended to be here forever. We will go to a “better place”. That does not mean we are to sit around doing nothing in the meantime.
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