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Tanach: Jeremiah (Yermiyah): Jeremiah (Yermiyah) Chapter 34

Book of AmosHebrew BibleTanakh

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This is Jeremiah chapter 34 from the Hebrew Bible, presented in the Masoretic Hebrew text alongside a full phonetic transliteration. It belongs to the prophetic literature tradition and comprises two distinct oracles delivered during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar. The first oracle (vv. 1–7) addresses King Zedekiah directly: Jerusalem will fall and burn, Zedekiah will be captured and brought before the Babylonian king, but he will die in peace rather than by the sword, with proper mourning rites — a notably individualized word of mercy within an otherwise catastrophic judgment. The second oracle (vv. 8–22) concerns a covenant Zedekiah made with Jerusalem's population to release all Hebrew debt-slaves in accordance with the Mosaic seven-year law; when the Babylonian army temporarily withdrew, the slaveholders reversed course and re-enslaved the freed people. God's response is a pointed act of rhetorical justice: because the people refused to proclaim freedom (*deror*) to their neighbors, God will now proclaim a "freedom" of his own — to sword, plague, and famine against them. The chapter's distinctive theological claim is that the slave-release covenant is continuous with the Sinai covenant, making its violation not merely a social wrong but a desecration of the divine name, punishable by the very Babylonian destruction the temporary compliance had seemed to forestall.

Tanach: Jeremiah (Yermiyah): Jeremiah (Yermiyah) Chapter 34

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