Jeremiah 34:20, commentary and pictures

Jeremiah 34:20 belongs to the prophecies and history concerning the fall of Jerusalem, specifically the account of Zedekiah's covenant to release Hebrew servants under the jubilee law. It is part of God's indictment of the Jews for oppression and enslavement, an iniquity that preceded their destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and their destruction and captivity as a state under him. Those who broke the covenant to free their servants were warned they would be handed over to enemies seeking their lives, defeated by their enemies, and their bodies left exposed as food for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth.

Because they broke that covenant and failed to proclaim liberty, God would give the covenant-breakers into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those seeking their lives. Their dead bodies would be left unburied as meat for the fowls of heaven and the beasts of the earth, as a consequence of their sin and broken faith. The surrounding warning names further consequences of the covenant-breaking: the sword, pestilence, famine, and removal among the nations. The word rendered life is the Hebrew nephesh, often translated soul, here referring to the lives of those handed over to their enemies, as seen in verses 20-21.

In the arrangement of Jeremiah, the chapter is read with chapters 35 and 36 within the section from Jeremiah 22 to 39. The prophecies are not in chronological order because the manuscript rolls were gathered together into one book, which makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself nearly always clearly indicates its chronology; in chronological order chapter 34 follows chapter 21 and precedes chapter 37. The warning was tied to a covenant God had made with Abraham before Israel became a nation. That covenant was 1,323 years old when Jeremiah delivered the warning, yet God regarded it as recent and still held His people accountable to His word.

The chapter shows that permitting slavery was contrary to God's moral law, even though special civil laws temporarily allowed the practice. The chapter belongs among readings that contain Messianic prophecies carried forward through the restoration from Babylon to the more glorious restoration under Christ Jesus the Lord. The picture of the people given into the power of enemies seeking their lives and their unburied bodies left for birds and wild animals to eat is also used among Old Testament prophecies to describe the desolation of the earth during the millennium, after the wicked are destroyed at Christ's second advent.