Jeremiah 1:15, commentary and pictures

Jeremiah 1:1-20 lays out promises of blessing for Judah on condition of obedience to God and warnings of destruction for persistence in disobedience, and this verse stands within the threatened judgment against the disobedient. It belongs to Jeremiah 1-3, which follows the history of the kingdom of Judah from Jehoshaphat through Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon and Josiah, dwindling out in the reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah and closing in B.C. 586. The verse foretells that kingdoms from the north would come against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah, gathering around Jerusalem and taking it. Those northern kingdoms would come under Babylon's leadership.

The setting of each invader's throne at the entering of the gates is not to be taken literally, but pictures the invaders as judging the people. The warning confronts false confidence that Jerusalem would endure because it was God's sanctuary and city, when the people's iniquities were leading to its destruction. In its immediate setting the prophecy applies locally to the coming fall of Jerusalem. The verse shows that in Old Testament prophecy the north is the region from which ungodly enemies and oppressors of Israel came.

The calling of all the families of the kingdoms of the north to set their thrones against Jerusalem and Judah and against all the cities of Judah gives the pattern for reading the northern names Gog, Magog, Rosh, Meshech and Tubal in Ezekiel 38, not as present nations such as Russia but as symbols of the forces of world evil opposed to God and His redeemed at the close of the thousand years, after the second resurrection and before their ultimate destruction. The verse may also point toward a last-days gathering in the war of Armageddon, when the thrones of all kingdoms would be at stake.